5 important things happening in South Africa today
·11 Feb 2019
Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:
- Load shedding is back, after an almost two month-long absence. Eskom announced surprise state 2 load shedding on Sunday due to a loss of capacity, with the group saying that chances were high that the same would have to be implemented on Monday. [Eskom]
- A major battle is looming over plans to unbundle Eskom, with unions rejecting the idea, and analysts saying that it does not address the real problem – which is said to be out of control coal and diesel costs and declining electricity sales. Numsa is planning strike action against the proposal. [Moneyweb]
- Weekend reports that president Cyril Ramaphosa wants to cut his cabinet and possibly even reduce the number of provinces is likely to be met with fierce political opposition, despite the good it will do the country. [Daily Maverick]
- DA leader Mmusi Maimane says that the party’s internal polling shows that it will do better than the 22% of the vote it achieved in 2014, and that Ipsos polls saying it will get only 14% are wrong. He said that Ipsos has been consistently wrong in the past. 2016’s Ipsos polls were fairly accurate, however. [Business Day, BusinessTech]
- South Africa’s rand recovered on Friday, tracking peers like the Turkish lira and Russian rouble as the dollar weakened and investors looked to profit on the greenback’s recent rally. On Monday the rand was at R13.61 to the dollar, R17.60 to the pound and R15.41 to the euro.
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