{"id":284904,"date":"2018-11-19T07:34:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T05:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=284904"},"modified":"2018-11-19T07:34:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T05:34:47","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-434","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/284904\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-434\/","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>Load shedding is back, after Eskom was forced to initiate stage 1 power cuts on Sunday to conserve energy &#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/companies\/energy\/2018-11-19-load-shedding-back-as-plant-outages-force-eskoms-hand\/\">with the grid remaining under pressure as Eskom sticks to emergency reserves.<\/a><\/strong> This is the first time South Africa&#8217;s turned to load shedding since 2016, discounting the few sabotage events earlier in 2018. [Business Day]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/SouthAfrica\/News\/d-day-for-gordhan-he-played-a-pivotal-role-to-stop-zuptas-20181119\">Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan will appear before the Zondo commission this week to testify about state capture and give his account of events as the scandal unfolded<\/a><\/strong>. The EFF has been on a campaign to discredit the minister, while his supporters have painted him as playing a pivotal role in unearthing the saga. [News24]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/capetimes\/news\/de-lille-expects-more-dirty-tricks-to-discredit-her-new-party-18170525\">Patricia de Lille has decided to form a new political party to contest the 2019 general elections, following her ouster from the DA<\/a><\/strong>. The DA shrugged off the announcement, while the EFF and ANC welcomed any new party that would eat away at the DA&#8217;s support base. [IOL]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2018-11-18-ramaphosas-shortlist-for-npa-boss\/\">President Cyril Ramaphosa has been given a shortlist of five names to be the next national director of public prosecutions.<\/a><\/strong> The candidates are\u00a0Shamila Batohi, Siyabulela Mapoma, Simphiwe Mlotshwa, Rodney de Kock and Andrea Johnson. Ramaphosa is reportedly in favour of Batohi for the job. [Daily Maverick]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand rose for a fourth straight session on Friday to end the week nearly 3% firmer, benefiting from political chaos in Britain and a revival of risk appetite linked to a thawing of US-Sino trade tensions. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Monday the rand was trading at R14.05 to the dollar, R18.02 to the pound and R16.02 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Load shedding is back; Gordhan will have his say at the Zondo commission this week; De Lille will launch a new party to contest the 2019 elections; and Ramaphosa has a shortlist of five names from which to choose SA&#8217;s next head prosecutor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":89422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-284904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284904","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=284904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284918,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284904\/revisions\/284918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}