Vodacom rubbishes report CEO Shameel Joosub to step aside

Vodacom Group on Thursday rubbished a report suggesting its CEO, Shameel Joosub, will soon leave the helm of the telecommunications operator to take on a new role as CEO of Vodafone Africa.

“Vodacom is aware of a highly speculative article quoting an unnamed ‘reliable source’ that Shameel Joosub has quit as CEO of Vodacom Group as he ‘is being promoted to a new position being created by Vodafone’,” said group spokesman Byron Kennedy.

“Vodacom wishes to place on record that it rejects these claims — together with other allegations in the article — as spurious, baseless and untrue,” Kennedy said.

“Earlier this month, it was announced that Shameel will represent the group on the Vodafone exco from April 2020. To be clear, Shameel Joosub remains the CEO of Vodacom Group.”

The denial comes after the website TechFinancials quoted an unnamed source as saying: “Joosub has quit. He is being promoted to a new position being created by Vodafone.”

UK-headquartered Vodafone Group is the controlling shareholder in Vodacom Group, which operates in South Africa, Lesotho, Tanzania, Mozambique and other African countries. Vodacom is also the controlling shareholder in Kenya’s Safaricom.

Vuyani Jarana

TechFinancials reported, also without naming the source of its information, that Vodacom is attempting to lure Vuyani Jarana back to the group. Jarana left Vodacom, where he was head of its enterprise unit, in 2017 to take the reins at South African Airways, but quit the airline earlier this year.

The report comes in the same week that Vodacom chief technology officer Andries Delport announced he was resigning to join Remgro’s telecoms business, which owns Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa. Chief financial officer Till Streichert will also step down from the group next year, it was announced on Thursday morning.  — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media