5 important things happening in South Africa today
·12 Apr 2017
Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:
- Opposition parties are putting their differences aside and joining together for a peopl’s action march against president Jacob Zuma. It also happens to be the president’s birthday. Protesters are due to march from Church Square in Pretoria to the Union Buildings starting at 9am, with the aim of getting rid of Zuma. The march may be impacted by the current bus strike, however.
- The SACP, while supporting the call for president Zuma to step down, says it will never join up with opposition parties to protest against him. The party – which is an ANC alliance member – has stuck to its guns in speaking out against the president and the Gupta family. The party’s leadership wants the Guptas kicked out of the country and their citizenship revoked. The SACP will picket outside Treasury next Friday.
- Following Fitch’s downgrade of South Africa’s credit rating to junk, the firm has followed through to downgrade SA banks and SOEs and some major businesses to junk as well. The group has downgraded Absa, Nedbank, FirstRand, Standard Bank, Investec, Eskom, Transnet and MTN to BB+ from BBB-. The downgrades follow a similar move from S&P Global last week.
- Business leader and Save SA lead, Sipho Pityana has appealed to ANC MPs to be rational and moral and vote to get president Jacob Zuma out of the presidency. In an open letter penned to all his fellow ANC members, Pityana urged MPs to use their power to rid South Africa of an “evil man”, saying that every day a new reason reveals itself as to why he is not fit to run the country.
- South Africa’s rand gained ground on Tuesday, spurred by a globally hobbled dollar and a decision by South Africa’s top court to consider whether a motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma should be taken by secret ballot. On Wednesday, the rand was trading at R13.78 to the dollar, R17.21 to the pound and R14.62 to the euro.
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