{"id":194482,"date":"2017-08-25T07:49:02","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T05:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=194482"},"modified":"2017-08-25T07:49:02","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T05:49:02","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-130","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/194482\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-130\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s what is happening and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.news24.com\/SouthAfrica\/News\/da-wants-strong-sanction-against-guptas-former-pr-firm-bell-pottinger-20170824\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The DA expects a &#8220;strong sanction&#8221; against the Guptas&#8217; former public relations firm Bell Pottinger, after the party received confirmation on Thursday afternoon that its complaint against the firm had been upheld.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>The party said that the UK\u2019s Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) professional practices committee agreed that Bell Pottinger violated its Professional Charter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/transport-and-tourism\/2017-08-25-citibank-pulls-plug-on-bankrupt-saa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Banks are feeling increasingly nervous about an implosion at the bankrupt SAA, with Citibank being the second bank to refuse to extend a loan to the sinking company.\u00a0In June, Standard Chartered Bank refused to roll over its loan of R2.2bn to SAA. <\/a><\/strong>The move required the Treasury to step in with an urgent bail-out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharenet.co.za\/v3\/sens_display.php?tdate=20170824163000&amp;seq=39&amp;scode=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Steinhoff has denied a German media report on executive fraud in the company which sent shares in the retailer into a freefall yesterday.<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0The company rejected the allegations as &#8216;dishonest&#8217;, saying substantial facts and allegations are wrong or misleading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/retail-and-consumer\/2017-08-25-woolworths-pins-hopes-on-anc-elective-conference\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The ANC December elective conference will be a definitive event for Woolworths, it said at a results presentation on Thursday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>The retailer released its worst results in almost a decade on tough trading conditions in SA and Australia, saying that until political certainty was reached in mid-December, it was effectively &#8216;on hiatus&#8217;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The South African rand weakened on Thursday, weighed down by expectations of lower domestic interest rates and cautious trade ahead of U.S.\u00a0Federal Reserve\u00a0chair\u00a0Janet Yellen&#8217;s speech at a central bankers&#8217; meeting.\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Friday the rand was trading at R13.18 to the dollar, R16.90 to the pound and R15.56 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DA expects Bell Pottinger to face sanctions after it was found to have breached the UK&#8217;s PR rules; another bank has refused to extend a loan at SAA; Steinhoff has denied allegations of fraud which saw its share price freefall; and Woolworths is pinning ts fortunes on the upcoming ANC elections. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":85966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-194482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194482","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=194482"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194498,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194482\/revisions\/194498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}