{"id":173499,"date":"2017-05-05T07:41:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T05:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=173499"},"modified":"2017-05-05T07:41:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T05:41:01","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/173499\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-52\/","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=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/money\/cabinet-reshuffle-didnt-weaken-the-rand-gigaba\">Finance minister Malusi Gigaba\u00a0says that the rand&#8217;s weakness had nothing to do with president Jacob Zuma and his decision to reshuffle his cabinet &#8211; pointing out that the rand has always been a volatile currency, and once even depreciated to almost R18 to the dollar.<\/a><\/strong> The rand crumbled after Zuma&#8217;s latest cabinet reshuffle, losing over 4% against the dollar immediately after the move. The rand plunged to R17.99 to the dollar after Zuma fired Gordhan&#8217;s predecessor, Nhlanhla Nene.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.702.co.za\/articles\/254855\/zuma-can-t-appeal-court-order-to-provide-cabinet-reshuffle-records-da\">The DA&#8217;s\u00a0James Selfe says that president Jacob Zuma cannot appeal a High Court order that he deliver the record and reasons for why he fired Gordhan in his cabinet reshuffle, because it is an\u00a0interlocutory order (intermediate order) which is part of the party&#8217;s main court battle<\/a><\/strong>, challenging the rationality of the president&#8217;s actions. On Thursday, Judge Vally sided with the DA ordering that Zuma hand over all record of what drove his decision.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/politics\/2017\/05\/04\/Public-Protector-agrees-to-probe-Dlamini-for-misleading-Parliament1\">Public Protector\u00a0Busisiwe Mkhwebane has agreed to take on the case looking into social development minister Bathabile Dlamini willfully misleading Parliament over the social grants issue,<\/a><\/strong> which led to a crisis that forced the Constitutional Court to extend and invalid and illegal contract. Dlamini is accused of knowing about the Sassa crisis years before admitting it to Parliament but doing absolutely nothing about it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>F<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2017-05-04\/conscience-important-in-zuma-vote-south-africa-s-gordhan-says\">ormer finance minister Pravin Gordhan said that voting with one&#8217;s conscience is a key component of voting on motions in Parliament &#8211; but there are other factors also. <\/a><\/strong>While some see conscience as the most important, other will see honouring the Constitution as what drives their vote, and others see loyalty to the party they represent as being the goal. Gordhan said that these are the discussions the ANC needs to have internally.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>On Thursday the rand lost ground against all major currencies, reaching a three-week low on South Africa&#8217;s PMI data, hawking news from the US Fed, and investors pulling money out of the market seeking greener pastures. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Friday, the rand was trading at R13.70 to the dollart, R17.69 to the pound and R15.04 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our finance minister says that Zuma&#8217;s cabinet reshuffles had absolutely nothing to do with the rand&#8217;s crash; the DA says Zuma cannot appeal the ruling that he must hand over the record and reasons for firing Gordhan, and the public protector agrees to investigate Bathabile Dlamini over the Sassa crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":99848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-173499","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\/173499","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=173499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173503,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173499\/revisions\/173503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}