{"id":137443,"date":"2016-09-21T07:55:09","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T05:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=137443"},"modified":"2016-09-21T07:55:09","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T05:55:09","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-45","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/137443\/5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-45\/","title":{"rendered":"5 things you need to know in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/local\/2016\/09\/21\/Wits-shuts-down-seeks-to-identify-those-who-perpetrated-acts-of-violence\">Wits university has shut down for the week, following student protests on Tuesday, which turned violent as students clashed with police on campus<\/a><\/strong>. Meanwhile, protest action has spread to other universities across the country, as students reject any fee hikes for 2017, and push the call for free education for all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Parliament&#8217;s portfolio committee on energy is<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/09\/21\/MPs-tangle-with-Tina\"> going after energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, looking to flex its constitutional muscles to force the minister to reveal documents related to the controversial nuclear build<\/a><\/strong>. To date, the minister has refused to reveal any information about the project, citing confidentiality &#8211; however, MPs are constitutionally within their rights to demand access.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2016\/09\/21\/Motsoeneng-mum-on-role-at-SABC\">SABC employee, Hlaudi Motsoeneng&#8217;s presence at the broadcaster is looking murkier each day, as the &#8216;former&#8217; COO refuses to say what he is actually doing now that he is no longer in the role<\/a><\/strong>. The SABC board is under pressure to remove Motsoeneng completely, but he has previously enjoyed support from the chair, and the the minister of communications, making his exit seem unlikely.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bdlive.co.za\/national\/education\/2016\/09\/21\/economist-warns-on-fees-gap\">Economist\u00a0Dawie Roodt has\u00a0warned that the South African government has made a promise to #FeesMustFall students that the country cannot afford to keep<\/a><\/strong>. He said that students saw billions of rands being siphoned off by corruption, which motivates them to protest; however, the students don&#8217;t realise that there is no money for free education when billions are being spent to bail out government companies each year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s currency continued to make gains on Tuesday following favourable international market movements and a positive view on the local market from ratings group Moody&#8217;s.\u00a0The rand\u00a0rallied to its highest in nearly two weeks against the dollar on Tuesday. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\">On Wednesday the rand was at R13.91 to the dollar, R18.00\u00a0to the pound and R15.46 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>In other news<\/strong>:\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/local\/2016\/09\/21\/Datamustfall-reaches-Parliament---Major-networks-in-the-house-today-after-Tbo-Touch-appeals-to-MPs\">The campaign by radio personality Tbo Touch to get network operators to bring down the price of mobile data has made its case to Parliament<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0Touch has been highly critical of mobile operators, calling their high data prices &#8220;daylight robbery&#8221;, and has appealed to MPs to introduce regulations that will ensure affordable data. Today, the operators will make their presentations in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wits has shut down for the week due to violent protests; MPs want documents on SA&#8217;s nuclear plans, and they want it now; Motsoeneng doesn&#8217;t want you to know what he&#8217;s still doing at the SABC; and mobile operators get their turn to talk about data prices in Parliament today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":102100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-137443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137445,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137443\/revisions\/137445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}