5 important things happening in South Africa today

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

• Public Enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan says the reason SAA was put into business rescue, instead of leaving it be liquidated, was to save the 10,000 jobs tied to the business. Gordhan said that government could not allow it to “fail in an uncontrolled fashion”. However, economists and analysts have questioned the R4 billion ‘bailout’ attached to the business rescue, saying it’s throwing money into a black hole. [Reuters]

• Stage 2 load shedding will continue on Monday until 23h00 at night. Eskom said it lost additional generating units on Sunday evening, with unplanned outages back up to 12,000MW – this resulted in additional use of diesel and water, which means the power utility was unable to restock supplies to avoid load shedding during the week. [Eskom]

• The South African Weather Service has issued a flood warning for several parts of Gauteng after several days of heavy rainfall. The rainfall is expected to start subsiding on Tuesday evening into Wednesday, when temperatures are also expected to start rising again. The weather service said that this rainfall pattern is nothing out of the ordinary. [TimesLive]

• Former DA leader Mmusi Maimane and former Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba are gearing up to launch a new ‘political movement’ – possibly a political party to contest the 2024 elections. Maimane and Mashaba have launched a ‘discussion platform’ to gauge what kind of organisation South Africans want. While no announcement of a new party has been made, many expect that will be the direction the former DA leaders will go. [EWN]

• The rand is drifting while it waits for a lead from international markets. This weekend, the White House reiterated the implementation date for additional tariffs on Chinese imports set to take place 15 December – i.e. next weekend. This has clearly put paid to any thoughts of an early end to the ongoing trade war. On Monday, the rand is trading at R14.62 to the dollar, R19.21 to the pound and R16.16 to the euro.