5 important things happening in South Africa today
·31 Oct 2017
Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:
- Dubai’s central bank has announced that it will be investigating allegations of money laundering by the Gupta family, though it would not go into any details. This follows the wealth of information contained in the Gupta leaks, which revealed that the controversial family used shelf companies in Dubai to process payments from SA government contracts.
- Transnet has distanced itself from the SAP kickback scandal, saying that, by the software group’s admission, the SOE had nothing to do with it. SAP admitted to paying a Gupta-linked company a R107 million kickback for help securing Transnet and Eskom contracts. Transnet has one of the biggest procurement budgets in SA, and has been a target of Gupta firms.
- President Jacob Zuma’s silence on claims he is working closely with South Africa’s criminal underworld is deafening, analysts say, and is likely a way to avoid dealing with the accusations. A new book published this week links Zuma to the illicit cigarette trade and alleges he was dodging taxes. The only statement from the presidency was that his tax affairs were in order.
- Social development minister Bathabile Dlamini is again facing the ire of parliament over her continued botching of the country social grants payment system. The minister is scheduled to appear before the standing committee on public accounts today – if she turns up, she will have to explain how her department is handling the Sassa/SAPO mess.
- South Africa’s rand clawed back ground against the dollar on Monday, benefiting from a pause in the greenback’s rally and a technical retracement of the previous week’s plunge to 11-month lows as the shock of last week’s bleak budget wore off. On Monday the rand was at R14.06 to the dollar, R18.57 to the pound and R16.36 to the euro.
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