5 important things happening in South Africa today
·17 Mar 2017
Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:
- The Constitutional Court will deliver its ruling on the Sassa matter at 10am today, finally giving various stakeholders direction in the ongoing grants crisis. The court will decide if it’s okay to go ahead with an interim contract with Net1’s CPS on an emergency basis, or whether dealing with the company is illegal and invalid like last time.
- Ratings firm S&P Global has reiterated that the South African government’s continued filtering of cash to its struggling SOEs is a major financial risk in the country, that is putting its credit rating in jeopardy. The group, which holds South Africa at one notch above junk, also highlighted the political tensions, slow growth and high unemployment, all of which is not being addressed.
- Western Cape premier Helen Zille’s spokesperson Michael Mpofu says that Zille was in no way defending colonialism in a series of tweets on Thurday – she was merely referring to how Singapore (where she visited) had moved past its colonial history to build a strong economy. Zille will face the DA’s disciplinary committee over the tweets. The ANC and the EFF have called for her to be removed.
- A new report by Stats SA shows that there are almost 580,000 child labourers in South Africa – children between the ages of 7 and 17, who are forced to do work for survival. The stats are even more alarming, showing that one in four of SA’s 11.2 million children not having a parent in the house, and 7% being orphaned, with no living parents.
- The South African rand continues to hold onto gains made in the wake of a rate hike announced by the US Federal Reserve, which softened the dollar and led to a rally in emerging markets, putting the local currency at its strongest level in almost 20 months. On Friday the rand was trading at R12.76 to the dollar, R15.77 to the pound and R13.74 to the euro.
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