Business

5 important things happening in South Africa today

Staff Writer

 ·3 Feb 2023

Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:

• No future Eskom COO: Eskom board member Mteto Nyati says Jan Oberholzer will not be replaced as COO after he retires, with the position being scrapped ahead of the imminent unbundling of the embattled power utility. Additionally, a company that was appointed to find a replacement for outgoing CEO Andre De Ruyter will present a long list of candidates to the board within the next two weeks. [News24]

• Concerns over Spurs deal: SA Tourism’s interim Chief Financial Officer, Johan van der Walt, has admitted to having connections to an agency dealing with the controversial R1 billion Tottenham Hotspur sponsorship deal. Company records show that van Der Walt has business interests with the agency’s CEO. A SA Tourism PowerPoint presentation showed that the agency must be paid over R31 million to initiate the sponsorship deal. [Daily Maverick]

• De Ruyter backs renewables: Andre De Ruyter has defended Eskom’s move away from coal-fired power stations in response to criticism from coal producers over the utility’s transition strategy. De Ruyter said that Eskom is not anti-coal, but building new coal-fired power stations would be slow, impractical and difficult to fund. He said that renewable energy paired with intermittency solutions, such as pumped storage and gas, could meet South Africa’s electricity demand. [News24]

• ANC loses court case: The DA says the court’s decision to let documents linked to the ANC’s cadre deployment policy be released to the public is a historic victory. The court said that it was unlawful and invalid for the ANC to refuse to make public its documents related to its cadre deployment policy. The DA’s Leon Schreiber argued that the cadre deployment policy played a role in corruption and state capture. The ANC is appealing the ruling. [EWN]

• Markets: The South African rand held steady on Thursday after surging a day earlier when the US Federal Reserve signalled it had turned a corner in the fight against inflation. Local investors will look to the purchasing managers’ index survey for January by S&P Global for clues on the health of the economy. On Friday (3 January), the rand is trading at R17.04/$, R18.64/€, and R20.89/£. Brent crude is trading at $82.00 a barrel. [Nasdaq]