{"id":304930,"date":"2019-03-13T06:54:59","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T04:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=304930"},"modified":"2019-03-13T06:54:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T04:54:59","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-512","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/304930\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-512\/","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>President Cyril Ramaphosa says that South Africa is ready to offer Zimbabwe support &#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fin24.com\/Economy\/Africa\/no-sa-bailout-for-zim-after-ramaphosa-visit-20190312\">but did not offer any money<\/a><\/strong>. Zimbabwe previously asked for a $1.2 billion bailout from SA; however, at this time, the country has only received humanitarian packages and a promise of working together. [News24]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Standard Bank has provided evidence of apparent Gupta money laundering to the state capture commission. The bank submitted <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2019-03-13-standard-bank-presents-records-of-alleged-money-laundering-operation-involving-gupta-linked-entities\/\">a &#8216;kickback&#8217; letter, and bank statements showing &#8216;worrying&#8217; multi-million rand transfers<\/a> <\/strong>between Gupta-linked companies and shelf companies. [Daily Maverick]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Boeing has responded to the grounding of its 737 MAX jets across the world, including South Africa,<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/world\/2019-03-12-boeing-says-it-has-full-confidence-in-737-max-safety\/\"> by saying it has full confidence in the model.<\/a><\/strong> This despite two of the aircraft being involved in similar crashes within 5 months of each other. [TimesLive]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>FirstRand expects its branch network to shrink over the next few years as its retail banking group FNB looks to further digitise its business. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL8N20Z0WN\">The bank said it would rather reduce floor space by about 30% than outright close branches<\/a><\/strong>. [Reuters]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand firmed on Tuesday, supported by renewed risk appetite after potential progress on Brexit in Britain and as the dollar weakened after US consumer price data. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Wednesday the rand was at R14.39 to the dollar, R18.83 to the pound and R16.23 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ramaphosa promises to support Zimbabwe &#8211; but no bailout; Standard Bank gives evidence of apparent Gupta money laundering; Boeing says it&#8217;s 100% confident in its 737 MAX planes; and expect FNB branches to get much smaller in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":294352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-304930","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\/304930","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=304930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304932,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304930\/revisions\/304932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}