{"id":141573,"date":"2016-10-28T07:48:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T05:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=141573"},"modified":"2016-10-28T07:48:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T05:48:54","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/141573\/5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-72\/","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>SARS, the Hawks and Treasury are all investigating the apparent &#8216;hostage&#8217; drama involving\u00a0SARS deputy director for law administration, Vlok Symington. While the revenue agency and finance minister Pravin Gordhan are taking the matter seriously,<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/10\/28\/SARS-drama-staged\"> the Hawks have laughed the incident off, with crimes against the state head, Brigadier Nyameka Xaba saying that the whole incident could have been staged<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/da-anc-blame-each-other-for-nmb-council-chaos\">The ANC and the DA are blaming each other for starting a brawl during a council meeting at the Nelson Mandela Bay metro on Thursday, where two DA councillors were badly injured<\/a><\/strong>, and one ANC councillor passed out. Despite placing the blame on the DA, the ANC is not in a very good position, as all other parties present at the meeting also pointed to the ANC as being the ones who started the violence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/anc-crisis-not-the-first-nor-the-last-says-mantashe\">ANC general secretary Gwede Mantashe has admitted that the party is in crisis &#8211; but \u00a0he maintains that it is not the first time, nor will it be the last time<\/a><\/strong>. Responding to calls for ANC leadership to step down (yet again), Mantashe said that such demands do not take the complexity of the current situation into account, and that there is no simple solution to overcome the party&#8217;s problems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/10\/28\/Gauteng-overspends-by-R1.8-billion\">Gauteng has overspent by R1.8 billion over the past decade in unauthorised expenditure, and will need to find money in its reserves to cover the costs<\/a><\/strong>. The bulk of the unauthorised spending was in health. Meanwhile, the province is also clamping down on poor performing contractors,<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbcafrica.com\/news\/southern-africa\/2016\/10\/27\/gauteng-issues-stern-warning-to-poor-performing-contractors\/\"> issuing warnings to companies that are failing to meet their deadlines on various projects<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand steadied on Thursday as improved global risk appetite cushioned the currency from extending recent losses, while stocks were pulled down by a global commodity sell-off. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\">On Friday the rand was trading at R13.85 to the dollar, R16.88 to the pound and R15.10 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An investigation is underway into the apparent &#8216;hostage&#8217; drama related to Pravin Gordhan&#8217;s fraud case &#8211; but the Hawks think it&#8217;s a joke; the ANC is blaming the DA for the violence in Nelson Mandela Bay&#8217;s council; and ANC SG Gwede Mantashe admits the party is in a deep crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":137581,"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":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-141573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141573","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=141573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141575,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141573\/revisions\/141575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}