{"id":293700,"date":"2019-01-16T07:44:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T05:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=293700"},"modified":"2019-01-16T07:44:17","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T05:44:17","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-472","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/293700\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-472\/","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.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2019-01-15-vusi-pikoli-to-head-up-risk-and-compliance-at-ailing-saa\/\">Bankrupt SAA has hired yet another high-profile executive as it tries to reverse its losses and salvage the company<\/a><\/strong>. The group has appointed former prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli as its chief risk and compliance officer. He will report directly to CEO Vuyani Jarana from 1 February. [Business Day]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Despite the ANC&#8217;s bid to push public pension funds to invest in SOEs as a way to resolve finance issues, the funds have drawn a line in the sand, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/news\/pension-funds-reject-investment-eskom\">saying they will oppose and fight back against any attempt to force them to plough cash into failing SOEs<\/a><\/strong>. [ENCA]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Gautrain is in trouble, with the rail service needing R1.5 billion to keep operating this year, amid a 3.5% drop in commuters using the service. It was revealed this week that <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/citizen.co.za\/business\/2064297\/taxpayers-cough-up-billions-for-gautrain-while-shareholders-rake-in-massive-profits\/\">taxpayers have been forking over R100 million a month in subsidies for the system, while shareholders take in the profits<\/a><\/strong>. [Citizen]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sport24.co.za\/OtherSport\/sabc-multichoice-to-engage-over-sa-sports-broadcasting-review-20190115\">Multichoice and the SABC are preparing their responses to proposed regulations that will tackle DStv&#8217;s monopoly on sports broadcasting in South Africa<\/a><\/strong>. The regulations want to make certain sports broadcasts available to free-to-air broadcasters. The regulations are currently going through the public comment process. [Sports24]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The South African rand fell on Tuesday, after worse-than-expected mining data pointed to lingering weakness in Africa\u2019s most industrialised economy.<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\"> On Wednesday the rand was trading at R13.75 to the dollar, R17.68 to the pound and R15.69 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAA makes another high-profile hire as losses continue; pension funds say they will fight any attempt to force them into investing in failing SOEs; the Gautrain needs R1.5 billion to keep operating; and Multichoice and the SABC prepare their responses to proposed regulations that will open up sport broadcasts in SA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":44769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-293700","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\/293700","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=293700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293710,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293700\/revisions\/293710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}