{"id":226781,"date":"2018-02-21T07:56:04","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T05:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=226781"},"modified":"2018-02-21T07:56:04","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T05:56:04","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-248","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/226781\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-248\/","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:\/\/www.treasury.gov.za\/\">Finance minister Malusi Gigaba will deliver the 2018 budget speech today at 14h00<\/a><\/strong>. Analysts are expecting a host of tax hikes along with some budget cuts to help plug a R50 billion gap in the Treasury. One of the biggest expected changes is to the country&#8217;s VAT &#8211; either hiking it by 1%, or removing some products from being zero-rated.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2018-02-21-mashaba-refers-himself-to-joburg-council-ethics-committee\/\">Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba has referred himself to the city&#8217;s ethics committee<\/a><\/strong>, following allegations in the media that he used his wife&#8217;s company to do business with the state. Mashaba said that he had vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, and insists that the allegations be fully investigated.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/no-formal-extradition-request-for-ajay-gupta-npa\">The NPA says there is no formal extradition request for Ajay Gupta, as the investigation into state capture is not yes complete.<\/a> <\/strong>The NPA said that an extradition order would limit the charges a person could face to those contained in the order &#8211; and the Guptas may yet face many more charges, so a formal order could take some time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business-report\/companies\/viceroy-rejects-capitec-proviso-in-open-letter-13395864\">Short-seller Viceroy&#8217;s campaign against Capitec continues, with another open letter claiming the bank is working even harder to hide a questionably clean loan book<\/a><\/strong>. Capitec warned shareholders that the campaign would continue for some time, saying that Viceroy will continue to try and twist public and investor perceptions against it for its own gain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The South African rand slipped on Tuesday, retreating from last week\u2019s three-year high as investors bagged profits ahead of the government\u2019s budget speech. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Wednesday, the rand was trading at R11.78 to the dollar, R16.46 to the pound and R14.51 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The budget speech will be presented today at 2pm; Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba refers himself to the city&#8217;s ethics committee; the NPA says there is no formal extradition order for the Guptas; and Viceroy takes yet another swing at Capitec as its campaign against the bank continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":207331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226781","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=226781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226783,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226781\/revisions\/226783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}