{"id":168699,"date":"2017-04-06T07:42:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T05:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=168699"},"modified":"2017-04-06T08:59:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T06:59:22","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/168699\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-41\/","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.biznews.com\/undictated\/2017\/04\/06\/quantifying-cost-sa-firing-gordhan-r250bn-rising\/\">President Zuma&#8217;s decision to reshuffle his cabinet and fire former finance minister Pravin Gordhan could have wiped as much as R370 billion from the South African economy<\/a><\/strong>. Some GDP growth forecasts have been readjusted downward from 1.1% to 0.2%, representing a R100 billion loss over 2 or so years &#8211; while the firing of Gordhan led to R132 billion being wiped from the JSE. Reuters also reports that junk status could <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL5N1HD2SF\">lose South Africa a further R140 billion in investment<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/news\/special-features\/kathrada\/gordhan-has-a-go-at-zuma-at-kathradamemorial-8514788\">Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan does not want his job back &#8211; he made that very clear this week, speaking at a memorial for ANC stalwart Ahmed Kathrada.<\/a><\/strong> The former minister said that he was not fired, but relieved of his responsibilities, and did not want to return to the portfolio as he should have retired long ago. He also took the opportunity to call social development minister Bathabile Dlamini out, saying she should stop blaming others for her mistakes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.702.co.za\/articles\/251277\/watch-civil-rights-activist-describes-how-anc-members-threatened-organisers\">Organisers of the march against president Jacob Zuma, set to take place tomorrow, say they will move ahead despite being threatened with violence by self-identified ANC members<\/a><\/strong>. The ANC Youth League has openly threatened to use violence against those marching against Zuma, and MK veterans have also threatened to to bus members up to Johannesburg to intimidate those who stand against Zuma.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/politics\/2017-04-06-detractors-bow-to-jacob-zumas-apology\/\">The ANC&#8217;s national working committee let Zuma off the hook for everything in the past week, but new reports suggests it&#8217;s because the president humbled himself before the committee and apologised for handling it poorly<\/a><\/strong>. Zuma reportedly apologised for bringing a so-called &#8220;intelligence report&#8221; into the matter, when all he really needed to do was to explain that his relationship with Gordhan was irreconcilable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand and government bonds extended losses on Wednesday following political tensions that led to the country&#8217;s debt being downgraded to junk status by S&amp;P Global Ratings earlier in the week. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday the rand was trading at R13.85 to the dollar, R17.30 to the pound and R14.79 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zuma&#8217;s actions in the last week may have cost South Africa R370 billion; Gordhan has made it very clear &#8211; he does not want his old job back; self-identified ANC members are threatening violence against anti-Zuma protesters; and Zuma may have actually said sorry to the ANC&#8217;s working committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-168699","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\/168699","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=168699"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168751,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168699\/revisions\/168751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}