{"id":170235,"date":"2017-04-13T07:44:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T05:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=170235"},"modified":"2017-04-13T07:44:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T05:44:02","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-45","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/170235\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-45\/","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:\/\/amabhungane.co.za\/article\/2017-04-13-the-minister-the-middleman-the-mansion-and-the-new-corporate-kid\">A new investigation by amaBhungane reveals ties between social development minister Bathabile Dlamini and a &#8220;shadowy middleman&#8221; who links her to private businesses like CPS and IT firm EOH.<\/a><\/strong> According to the report, the middleman is living in a R65 million mansion, and is being funded by companies to get them access to lucrative social development contracts. Dlamini has been accused of orchestrating the Sassa grants crisis to keep Net1&#8217;s CPS on the payroll.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2017\/04\/13\/Im-staying-says-Zuma\">President Jacob Zuma says that he will step down &#8211; but only if the ANC asks him to. <\/a><\/strong>The president was speaking at his birthday celebrations on Wednesday, where laughed and danced along with supporters, while thousands marched against him. He said that he would stay an ANC member until the day he dies, and after his time as president, will continue working with his local branch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.za\/2017\/04\/12\/helen-zille-is-being-charged-over-those-tweets-about-colonialism_a_22037224\/?utm_hp_ref=za-homepage\">Western Cape premier and former DA leader Helen Zille is being formally charged by her party, on the grounds of broadly bringing the party into disrepute.<\/a><\/strong> Zille has caused several storms over her comments made on social media over the past few years, with her latest, centered around colonialism, being the final straw for the DA. Zille said that not all the aspects of the legacy of colonialism were negative.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/parliament-postpones-vote-of-no-confidence\">Speaker of the National Assembly Baleke Mbete has finally agreed to postpone the motion of no confidence debate against president Zuma, after first denying that she had the power to do so, and then treating the request as a withdrawal.<\/a><\/strong> No new date for the vote has been chosen yet, as parties are waiting to see what happens with the Constitutional Court case on whether or not the vote can be done through a secret ballot.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand climbed to a one-week high on Wednesday, supported by a weaker dollar and encouraged by comments from the new finance minister indicating no significant change in policy. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday, the rand was trading at R13.42 to the dollar, R16.87 to the pound and R14.34 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>. Markets will be closed on Friday through to Monday for the Easter weekend.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new report links social development minister Bathabile Dlamini to shadowy businessmen who scored millions from the grants crisis; Zuma says he will go &#8211; but only if the ANC asks; Zille is being charged with bringing the DA into disrepute; and the Zuma no confidence vote has been postponed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":165027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-170235","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\/170235","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=170235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170241,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170235\/revisions\/170241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}