{"id":153109,"date":"2017-01-27T08:18:58","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T06:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=153109"},"modified":"2017-01-27T08:18:58","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T06:18:58","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-124","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/153109\/5-things-you-need-to-know-in-south-africa-today-124\/","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.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2017-01-27-zuma-adamant-he-did-not-delay-signing-of-fica-bill\/\">President Jacob Zuma denies claims that he is delaying the signing of a new FICA Bill, which will allow banks to keep tighter surveillance on prominent and influential South Africans and their families when doing business with the state<\/a><\/strong>. Politicians have claimed Zuma is delaying the Bill as it will impact the president himself; however Zuma has argued that the Bill still has constitutional conflicts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/news\/politics\/joburgs-r34bn-irregular-expenditure-shock-7517241\">DA mayor in Joburg, Herman Mashaba claims that the City of Johannesburg has racked up a R3.4 billion bill in previously unreported expenditure under the previous ANC government in the municipality<\/a><\/strong>. Mashaba said that the vast majority of cases of fruitless and wasteful expenditure raised by the Auditor General were never investigated by the ANC government.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/gordhan-takes-next-step-in-gupta-saga\">Finance minister Pravin Gordhan will play his next card in the ongoing Gupta saga, as he is scheduled to submit an answering affidavit in the High Court today.<\/a><\/strong> Gordhan will respond to the Guptas&#8217; affidavit which accuses him of masterminding a conspiracy to get the family&#8217;s South African businesses shut down. The family provided no evidence to back up the allegation, citing only unnamed sources.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbcafrica.com\/news\/southern-africa\/2017\/01\/26\/african-perceptions-of-south-africa\/\">Interviews with senior officials from African countries have revealed how the rest of the continent perceives South Africa &#8211; and it&#8217;s not very positive<\/a><\/strong>. Researchers\u00a0asked African leaders how they see our country, and the general view was that South Africa is self-serving, xenophobic, condescending and slow to take action on pan-African matters.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand weakened against the dollar on Thursday amid a retreat in commodity prices and as the greenback was buoyed by expectations for higher U.S. inflation and growth. South African shares, however, edged higher, in line with emerging market peers on renewed risk appetite after the U.S. Dow Jones index broke past 20,000 points. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Friday the rand was at R13.47 to the dollar, R16.88 to the pound and R14.37 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zuma denies purposefully delaying the FICA Bill that will clamp down on families doing business with the state; Mashaba exposes R3.4 billion in unreported spending in the City of Joburg under the ANC; and Gordhan heads back to court to answer allegations made by the Guptas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":106749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-153109","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\/153109","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=153109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153117,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153109\/revisions\/153117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}