{"id":145673,"date":"2016-12-05T07:58:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T05:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=145673"},"modified":"2016-12-05T07:58:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T05:58:08","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/145673\/5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-98\/","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\/politics\/2016\/12\/04\/DA-says-it%E2%80%99s-looking-forward-to-seeing-Zuma-in-court---again\">The DA says it is looking forward to another court battle against president Jacob Zuma, as the party stands opposed to Zuma&#8217;s court bid to have the Public Protector report into state capture set aside.<\/a><\/strong> DA leader Mmusi Maimane described Zuma&#8217;s court bid as the &#8216;last kicks of a dying horse&#8217; &#8211; and act of desperation to delay the inevitable. Zuma says the PP&#8217;s report was unfair to him, and made unconstitutional demands.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2016-12-04\/south-african-economic-recovery-key-to-ward-off-junk-rating-risk\">With South Africa avoiding a cut to junk status last Friday, all eyes are on 2017, and what it will take to avoid the damaging rating in the months to come.<\/a><\/strong> According to the ratings agencies, South Africa will have to claw its way out of declining economic growth, and it will need to keep its volatile political situation in check. However, with the ANC&#8217;s elective conference next year, and the well publicised divisions within the ruling party, South Africa has been warned that the rating situation will be as uncertain, if not more so, than in 2016.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/sundaytimes\/stnews\/2016\/12\/04\/Nkosazana-dumps-AU-business-to-back-Zuma\">In the trend of the ANC putting itself ahead of everything &#8211; including Africa, it seems &#8211; it has been revealed the African Union chair, Nkosazana Dlamnini-Zuma dropped her duties at the continental body to attend the ANC&#8217;s NEC last week<\/a><\/strong>. The Sunday Times reports that Dlamini-Zuma had responsibilities in Cameroon that weekend, but dropped them at the last minute to attend the meeting in Centurion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/12\/05\/Gloves-off-as-SABC-Parliament-face-off\">The SABC is trying its best to frustrate the Parliamentary committee&#8217;s investigation into its operation, by reportedly blocking access to needed documentation &#8211; including minutes of meetings, and documents related to multi-million rand contracts<\/a><\/strong>. The committee said it was ready to take the SABC to court over the delays, which, if successful, would put the broadcaster in contempt of court.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Standard &amp; Poor&#8217;s downgraded South Africa&#8217;s local debt by one notch to BBB on Friday but kept its sovereign credit rating unchanged at BBB-, one level above &#8220;junk&#8221; status, while saying the economy was still struggling. Markets responded favourably to the review, with the rand strengthening immediately.<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\"> On Monday, the rand was at R13.88 to the dollar, R17.62 to the pound and R14.66 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DA is looking forward to battling president Jacob Zuma in court yet again; ratings agencies say South Africa needs economic growth and political stability &#8211; 2017 isn&#8217;t likely to deliver either; and AU chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma reportedly put the ANC ahead of her duties at the AU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":106751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-145673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145673","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=145673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145675,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145673\/revisions\/145675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}