{"id":239811,"date":"2018-04-23T08:02:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T06:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=239811"},"modified":"2018-04-23T08:02:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T06:02:10","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-288","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/239811\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-288\/","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.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-04-20\/south-africa-s-eskom-gets-workaround-to-tackle-coal-shortages\">Eskom has been given permission to circumvent some procurement rules so that it can get much needed coal to its plants that are short-stocked.<\/a><\/strong> Treasury will allow Eskom to procure coal without a competitive tender process. This is so that the shortage can be addressed quickly, and the power utility can avoid load shedding. [Bloomberg]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/south-africa\/nationwide-bus-strike-continues\">The nationwide bus strike will continue this week, leaving thousands of commuters stranded and looking for alternative transport.<\/a><\/strong> The strike is over wages, where the workers are seeking a 9.5% increase, and are refusing to take any multi-year agreement or other deal. The demand was lowered from 12% previously. [eNCA]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/city-press.news24.com\/News\/zuma-legal-team-wanted-equality-of-arms-to-fight-npa-20180421\">Former president Jacob Zuma wants taxpayers to pay up for his hefty legal team, arguing that he needs to be on equal footing with the NPA<\/a><\/strong>, which has massive resources behind it. Zuma wants you to pay for\u00a03 senior advocates, 2 junior advocates, an attorney, a candidate attorney and an accounting expert. [City Press]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2018-04-23-500000-kids-not-at-school-say-its-useless\/\">Over 500,000 South African children and teenagers who should be in school are not<\/a> <\/strong>&#8211; with many saying they find school to be useless or not interesting. The largest group are from the 16-18 year age bracket, showing a large number of kids are entering the job market with no matric. [Times Select]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand weakened by as much as one percent on Friday, hit by returning demand for the dollar and rising US treasury yields that prompted profit taking after the local currency&#8217;s recent rally. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Monday the rand was trading at R12.09 to the dollar, R16.95 to the pound and R14.83 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom is given the green light to procure coal without a tender to keep the lights on; the nationwide bus strike will continue this week; Zuma wants taxpayers to foot the bill for his hefty legal team in his fight against the state; and half a million kids who should be in school are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":56303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239811","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\/239811","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=239811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239819,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239811\/revisions\/239819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}