{"id":140609,"date":"2016-10-19T08:06:34","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T06:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=140609"},"modified":"2016-10-19T08:06:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T06:06:34","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-65","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/140609\/5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-65\/","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:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2016\/10\/19\/Will-NPA-head-drop-Gordhan-case\">NPA head Shaun Abrahams has received representations from two of the three en facing fraud charges in the SARS saga, and must now review his decisions to pursue the case<\/a><\/strong>. Ivan Pillay and Oupa Magashula have asked for a review &#8211; while finance minister Pravin Gordhan has not. Gordhan believes Abrahams is determined to push ahead with the case, and called the invitation to ask for a review &#8216;pointless&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has revealed the details of 250 unlisted investments &#8211;<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biznews.com\/sa-investing\/2016\/10\/18\/pic-lent-r1bn-iqbal-surves-independent\/\"> including a R1.1 billion loan to Iqbal Surve&#8217;s Sekunjalo for Independent Media.<\/a><\/strong> The investment company defended pumping the money into Sekunjalo, saying that media in South Africa remains untransformed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Gupta family will be opposing finance minister Pravin Gordhan&#8217;s application to the court asking it to rule that he cannot get involved with the Gupta&#8217;s ongoing drama with SA banks. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/mining\/2016-10-19-gordhan-playing-games-say-guptas\/\">The family say the application is an abuse of process, and that Gordhan is playing political games<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/ancyl-defends-maine-over-call-to-arms\">ANC Youth League leader Collen Maine has retracted his statement calling for ANC veterans to take up arms to defend Jacob Zuma <\/a><\/strong>&#8211; however the organisation insists he was &#8216;taken out of context&#8217;. The youth league said that Maine was not head of the veterans, so the call held no weight.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand rallied strongly to its firmest in one\u00a0week on Tuesday as investors took a calmer view of charges\u00a0brought against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\">On Wednesday the rand was trading at R13.91 to the dollar, R17.07 to the pound and R15.27 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>In other news<\/strong>: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/10\/19\/Free-education-impossible-now\">MPs say that South Africa is not a &#8216;free for all&#8217; and is simply in no position to provide free education to students while the recovery rate on student loans is at 12%<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pressure is on the NPA to review its decision to charge Pravin Gordhan and other former SARS executives for fraud; the PIC has revealed a R1 billion loan to Iqbal Surve&#8217;s Sekunjalo group; and the Guptas are calling Gordhan&#8217;s court bid an abuse, and a political game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":139871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-140609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140609","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=140609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140611,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140609\/revisions\/140611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}