{"id":289782,"date":"2018-12-07T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T05:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=289782"},"modified":"2018-12-07T07:30:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T05:30:08","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-448","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/289782\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-448\/","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:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2018-12-07-00-gupta-looters-leaves-sa-in-the-dark\">Load shedding could have been avoided, if billions of rands meant for maintenance hadn&#8217;t been directed to the Guptas, a new investigation has found.<\/a><\/strong> The Mail &amp; Guardian reports that R2 billion meant for maintenance in 2015 and 2016 was used to pay R1.5 billion to McKinsey and Trillian &#8211; with a further R600 million paid to the Guptas&#8217; Tegeta. [M&amp;G]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/health\/2018-12-06-the-mystery-of-the-status-of-the-nhi-bill\/\">Cabinet has rejected the highly contested National Health Insurance Bill, sending it back to the Department of Health for further reworking<\/a><\/strong>. Recent reports pointed to a draft of the bill being sent to parliament that had been changed without consultation, making wide-sweeping changes that would negatively impact the industry. [Business Day]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2018\/12\/07\/hlaudi-motsoeneng-i-am-going-to-run-and-lead-south-africa-as-president\">Former SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng says he will one day lead South Africa is its president.<\/a> <\/strong>The disgraced exec, who has been fingered as being responsible for millions of rands in financial losses, is in court fighting to keep access to his multi-million pension. The SIU is trying to recover R20 million from him. [EWN]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/news\/media-has-agenda-eff\">The EFF is continuing its war against the media, accusing it &#8211; not specifying any group or publication &#8211; of having an agenda<\/a><\/strong>, and refusing to publish &#8220;the absolute truth&#8221;. In the past weeks, EFF leadership has threatened journalists and banned media houses from rallies. News reports have been focusing on the party&#8217;s ties to the R2 billion VBS looting. [ENCA]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand weakened more than 2% on Thursday and bonds fell after the current account deficit widened in the third quarter and Eskom said it was considering restructuring its debt, dimming investor appetite for the currency. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Friday the rand was at R14.04 to the dollar, R17.94 to the pound and R15.96 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Load shedding could have been avoided if it wasn&#8217;t for the Guptas; cabinet has rejected the National Health Insurance Bill; SABC&#8217;s disgraced former COO says he will be South Africa&#8217;s president one day; and the EFF continues its war against the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":75316,"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-289782","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\/289782","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=289782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289800,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289782\/revisions\/289800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}