{"id":161365,"date":"2017-03-02T08:21:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T06:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=161365"},"modified":"2017-03-02T08:21:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T06:21:24","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/161365\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-17\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening 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\/2017-03-01-mzwanele-manyi-is-not-talking-about-the-anc-i-lead-ramaphosa-says\/\">Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has voiced his support for the FICA Bill, which will open South African politicians up to further scrutiny by the banks which will be looking out for any fraudulent activity<\/a><\/strong>. Ramaphosa criticised\u00a0former MP\u00a0and\u00a0Progressive Professionals Forum president Mzwanele Manyi, who said the bill will bankrupt the ANC, saying that Manyi was not talking about the ANC he knows.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2017\/03\/02\/Ford-under-investigation-for-contravening-National-Consumer-Act1\">The National Consumer Commission has launched an investigation into Ford South Africa for breaching the National Consumer Act, following around 50 Ford Kugas which have burst into flames this year<\/a><\/strong>. Ford and its dealerships face a potential fin of 10% of their annual turnover &#8211; totalling billions of rands. Ford submitted a report to the NCC on the Kuga saga, but was found to be lacking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/economy\/sas-ratings-outlook-has-improved\/\">Thanks to finance minister Pravin Gordhan&#8217;s well-received budget, South Africa&#8217;s risk rating for the year has reduced to a point where we can say the chances of avoiding a cut to junk are greater than the alternative<\/a><\/strong>. According to\u00a0Johann Els, senior economist at Old Mutual Investment Group, the forecast for the probability of a rating downgrade to junk is now below 50%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharenet.co.za\/v3\/sens_display.php?tdate=20170302070500&amp;seq=2\">South African mobile group MTN has posted its first headline loss in 20 years, after the group faced a challenging 2016 &#8211; hit by a massive regulatory fine in Nigeria, and fluctuations in the exchange rate<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0MTN&#8217;s headline loss was 77 cents per share in the year to end-December compared with headline earnings of 746 cents per share a year earlier. The biggest hit was from the $1.1 billion Nigeria fine over unregistered SIM cards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South African stocks rose on Wednesday as mining firms got a lift from upbeat Chinese manufacturing data, while the rand firmed slightly on bets of a weaker dollar in the long<br \/>\nterm. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday the rand was trading at R13.02 to the dollar, R15.98 to the pound and R13.71 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ramaphosa supports the Fica Bill that could see banks take a closer look at politicians&#8217; money; Ford is being investigated by the NCC; the odds are in favour of South Africa avoiding junk after Budget 2017; and MTN posts its first headline loss in 20 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":103707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-161365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-finance","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161365","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=161365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161387,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161365\/revisions\/161387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}