{"id":193182,"date":"2017-08-18T07:50:54","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T05:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=193182"},"modified":"2017-08-18T07:50:54","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T05:50:54","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-125","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/193182\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-125\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/energy\/2017-08-18-chaos-deepens-at-eskom-as-suspended-bosses-reinstated\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eskom has reportedly reinstated two of its top executives after\u00a0they had been suspended for making suspicious payments of R600 million to Gupta-linked financial advisory firm Trillian<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0Business Day has reportedly seen signed documents that show senior procurement manager Charles Kalima and former procurement head Edwin Mabelane were handed suspension letters over the Trillian payments on Monday and then told to report back to work on Thursday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/citizen.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/1616788\/fund-smaller-political-parties-to-improve-multi-party-democracy-iec\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Independent Electoral Commission has backed a\u00a0change to the funding model of political parties in South Africa<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0IEC deputy chairman, Terry Tselane said that the current arrangement regarding public funding benefitted larger political parties represented in Parliament and provincial legislatures. It excluded smaller parties not represented and also did not include local government.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/financial-services\/2017-08-18-why-kpmgs-gupta-woes-not-over\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission has indicated that it will now be actively monitoring KPMG over repeated\u00a0failures to take action against its directors.<\/a><\/strong> If it is dissatisfied, the commission has the power to invoke section 22 of the Act relating to the prohibition of reckless trading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.news24.com\/SouthAfrica\/News\/impossible-for-grace-mugabe-to-have-a-diplomatic-passport-international-law-specialist-20170817\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africa is holding its breath as to what action will be taken against Zimbabwean first-lady Grace Mugabe<\/a><\/strong>. It is still not known whether Mugabe &#8211; who was reportedly involved in an assault in Sandton last week &#8211; will qualify for diplomatic immunity, whether the South African government will decide to prosecute and whether a third-party such as Afriforum&#8217;s Gerrie Nel will take on the case.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand gave up gains on Thursday as traders booked profits after the currency rallied overnight on diminishing bets of a U.S. interest rate increase and higher gold prices.\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday, the rand was trading at R13.27 to the dollar, R17.11 to the pound and R15.57 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom has reportedly reinstated two suspended Gupta-linked executives; The IEC has backed a change to political funding in South Africa; KPMG is now being &#8220;actively monitored&#8221; to ensure it takes action against its dodgy directors; and South Africa waits to see what action will be taken against Zimbabwean first-lady Grace Mugabe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":75316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-193182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193182","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=193182"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193198,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193182\/revisions\/193198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}