{"id":209999,"date":"2017-11-10T07:52:44","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T05:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=209999"},"modified":"2017-11-10T07:52:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T05:52:44","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-183","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/209999\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-183\/","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>At the behest of president Jacob Zuma, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2017-11-10-00-grant-cuts-to-fund-fee-free-tuition\">reports indicate that the SA government will cut social grants payments, reduce the rollout or RDP houses and hike taxes to foot the bill for Zuma&#8217;s &#8216;imminent&#8217; free education plan<\/a><\/strong>, which will reportedly set South Africa back R40 billion a year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/economy\/2017-11-10-reserve-bank-flags-soes-defaulting-on-debt-obligations\/\">The Reserve Bank has flagged South African SOEs as the biggest risks in the country, as they struggle to meet their debt obligations.<\/a><\/strong> In its latest financial stability review, the bank also highlighted a sudden drop off in foreign investment and warned of the risks of a sovereign downgrade.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/financial-services\/2017-11-10-investec-bolsters-its-product-arsenal-with-life-insurance\/\">Investec has ventured into the realm of insurance, with the launch of its Investec Life insurance product. <\/a><\/strong>The launch comes as the banking and financial services market converges, with Discovery launching banking services in 2018.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma doesn&#8217;t care much about endorsement from businesses in her bid for country&#8217;s top spot &#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/business-endorsement-not-a-priority-in-anc-race-dlamini-zuma\">and will be hinging her campaign on prioritising transferring the wealth of the white minority to the black majority.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand weakened on Thursday after comments by President Jacob Zuma raised concerns about higher spending on education, which would put added strain on the country\u2019s already stretched public finances. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Friday the rand was at R14.25 to the dollar, R18.73 to the pound and R16.60 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zuma is reportedly planning to hike taxes, cut social grants payments to pay for free tertiary education in SA; SARB says state companies are the biggest risk to financial stability; Investec moves into providing insurance; and Dlamini-Zuma doesn&#8217;t care about &#8216;white monopoly capital&#8217; business support in her bid for the presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209999","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=209999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210005,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209999\/revisions\/210005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}