Finance

5 important things happening in South Africa today

Staff Writer

 ·12 May 2017

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

• ANC MP Brian Molefe is expected to make his way back to Eskom as its CEO, after the power utility’s board rescinded his application for early retirement. Eskom took the decision after Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown last month objected to Eskom’s payment of a R30 million pension payout to Molefe. The board could not reach an agreement over the payment and had to rescind his retirement. Molefe’s contract of employment only ends in September 2020.

• Western Cape premier Helen Zille is facing more trouble for her ‘colonialism’ tweets – not only from her own party, which is charging her with bringing the DA into disrepute, but the South African Human Rights Commission is also pushing ahead with an investigation after numerous people laid complaints about the tweets. The SAHRC investigation is not around hate speech, but around infringement on human dignity, it said.

• Former ANC treasurer-general and recent presidential hopeful Mathews Phosa says that if the ANC ever took the moral high-road, it would have rid itself of Zuma long ago. He said that the only reason Zuma remains president of the ANC is because the party’s National Executive Committee does not take its job seriously. The ANC NEC protects Zuma and wants members to unite around corruption.

• Three students at Stellenbosch University have been suspended over allegedly being involved with spreading “Anglo-Afrikaner” propaganda using Nazi-era imagery. The posters were put up at the university under the title of “fight for Stellenbosch”. The university has had its share of racial tensions in the past. The students  behind the posters are facing disciplinary action.

• South Africa’s rand climbed more than one percent on Thursday to its firmest level in nearly a week as demand for emerging currencies continued to improve in the wake of renewed political uncertainty in the United States. On Friday the rand was trading at R13.37 to the dollar, R17.22 to the pound and R14.53 to the euro.