{"id":332559,"date":"2019-08-01T07:42:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T05:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=332559"},"modified":"2019-08-01T07:42:19","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T05:42:19","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-606","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/332559\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-606\/","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:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL8N24W80Y\">A parliamentary committee will discuss a request to look into the fitness of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to hold her office.<\/a> <\/strong>The committee will likely be established in September. Calls for Mkhwebane to step down or be removed from the office have been gaining momentum following a series of defeats in court, when subjects of her reports have challenged them. Mkhwebane has also been accused of pushing political agendas in her investigations, specifically targeting the Ramaphosa presidency. [Reuters]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The National Education, Health and Allied Workers\u2019 Union (Nehawu) <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business-report\/economy\/we-will-shut-down-government-if-public-sector-wages-are-cut-nehawu-30129799\">has threatened to shut the country down should the government make any move to cut salaries in the public sector.<\/a> <\/strong>Treasury&#8217;s director-general, Dondo Mowgajane last week said that a 10% wage reduction in the public sector could help the country cut costs. Nehawu, which represents over 235,000 public sector workers, said it would never enter negotiations to discuss reductions. [IOL]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/news\/tshwane-admits-rules-were-bent-senior-staff-increases\">The City of Tshwane has admitted that it bent the rules to give senior staff an 18% increase<\/a><\/strong>. The increase was implemented without approval from bargaining councils, where the proposal is still pending. The increase has resulted in chaos in the country&#8217;s capital, where employees who didn&#8217;t receive the increase shut down the city, leading to blockages in service delivery, with reports of intimidation and other threats. [ENCA]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Action is being taken against those implicated in the capture of state institutions,<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2019-07-31-sars-suspends-three-executives-following-nugent-report-findings\/\"> with three SARS executives being suspended based on the allegations made in the Nugent Commission into the revenue service<\/a><\/strong>. While SARS stressed that these were precautionary suspensions (and not a finding of wrongdoing), the executives will now go through a disciplinary process to determine their standing. [TimesLive]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand steadied against the dollar in late trade on Wednesday, as investors awaited a likely cut in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, shifting the spotlight away from domestic economic troubles. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday the rand was at R14.35 to the dollar, R17.41 to the pound and R15.86 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parliament will consider looking into Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane&#8217;s fitness to hold office; unions threaten to shut down South Africa if government tries to cut public sector wages; City of Tshwane admits that it bent the rules to give senior staff an 18% increase; and SARS suspends three execs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":4325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-332559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332559","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=332559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332595,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332559\/revisions\/332595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}