{"id":266609,"date":"2018-08-22T07:48:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T05:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=266609"},"modified":"2018-08-22T07:48:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T05:48:10","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-372","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/266609\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-372\/","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.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2018-08-22-sars-was-broken-while-fixing-a-problem-that-never-existed-it-cost-r204-million\/\">Suspended SARS chief Tom Moyane&#8217;s sanctioned R200 million plan to fix issues at the tax collector was unnecessary<\/a><\/strong>, and resulted in needed processes being shuttered and overall collection to decline. This is the evidence submitted to the Commission of Inquiry into SARS by two SARS officials. [Daily Maverick]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/labour\/2018-08-22-eskom-faces-fresh-wage-battle\/\">Eskom faces yet more wage issues, with 6,700 line managers and other workers reportedly making demands for the same wage increases as workers in the collective bargaining unit.<\/a><\/strong> Eskom is currently struggling to finalise those wage talks, but has offered 7.5% increases for the year, and a once-off R10,000 bonus. [Business Day]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2018-08-22-surprise-zumaville-is-a-no-show-but-we-still-paid-for-it\/\">Plans to build a town on the doorstep of Jacob Zuma&#8217;s Nkandla home &#8211; dubbed &#8220;Zumaville&#8221; &#8211; are reportedly up in smoke, with millions of rands of taxpayers&#8217; money already spent and wasted<\/a><\/strong>. The town would have cost R2 billion to build, but to date only a small IT centre has been completed. [Times Live]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/commoditiesNews\/idAFL8N1VC4EC\">Parliament has summoned Steinhoff\u2019s former chief executive Markus Jooste and and ex-chief financial officer Ben la Grange to give evidence in an inquiry over the accounting scandal at the firm<\/a><\/strong>. The duo will have to answer for the scandal that wiped 90% of the company&#8217;s value from the markets. [Reuters]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand firmed on Tuesday as the dollar weakened after US President Donald Trump criticised the head of the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Wednesday the rand was at R14.37 to the dollar, R18.55 to the pound and R16.63 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suspended SARS chief has been accused of wasting millions to fix problems that never existed; Eskom is reportedly facing even more wage issues, and line managers and engineers demand the same increases offered to unions; and &#8220;Zumaville&#8221; is up in smoke &#8211; but taxpayers have already spent money on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":257215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-266609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266609","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=266609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266619,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266609\/revisions\/266619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}