Finance

5 important things happening in South Africa today

Staff Writer

 ·11 Sep 2019

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

• South Africa will more than likely keep its current credit rating for the rest of the year, according to Moody’s, avoiding the much dreaded downgrade to full junk status. The group pointed to the SA’s strong institutions and reasonably good foreign currency reserves as some reasons behind why it has not yet downgraded the country to junk status. [Enca]

• Three years after signing for a loan from VBS to pay for the security upgrades at Nkandla, former president Jacob Zuma has defaulted – and now the bank wants him to pay up. Court papers filed by VBS show the banking group wants Zuma to pay R500,000 in arrears on his loan, and are eyeing Nkandla itself as leverage. Zuma was ordered by the courts to pay for the security upgrades himself. [TimesLive]

• Naspers will be listing all of its internet businesses, including its 31% stake in Chinese internet giant Tencent, in Amsterdam today. The group will be spinning off the business under the name Prosus, which is expected to list at an indicative price of 58.70 euros per share for Prosus, implying a market value of 95.3 billion euros ($105 billion). The Prosus listing should see about a quarter of Naspers’ value move to Amsterdam. [Reuters]

• The government says the recent violent attacks against foreign nationals in the country are not driven by xenophobia, but rather by criminality, saying that it has been an organised attack meant to destabilise the country. They could not say, however, who was orchestrating the attacks, or what they would gain by doing so. So far 12 people have died in the attacks – two foreign nationals, and 10 South Africans. [M&G]

• South Africa’s rand firmed on Tuesday, buoyed by improved investor appetite for riskier assets and comments from ratings agency Moody’s that the country is unlikely to suffer a credit downgrade to junk in the short term. On Wednesday, the rand was trading at R14.62 to the dollar, R18.07 to the pound and R16.16 to the euro.