{"id":548934,"date":"2022-01-06T07:37:12","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T05:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=548934"},"modified":"2022-01-06T07:37:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T05:37:12","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1192","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/548934\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1192\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Coronavirus<\/strong>: In South Africa, a total of 49,970 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, with 11,106 new cases reported, representing a 22.2% positivity rate. A further 110 Covid-19 related deaths have been reported, taking total fatalities to 91,561 to date. The total number of vaccines administered is 28.16 million.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Second term<\/strong>: Cyril Ramaphosa has received his first endorsement for a second term as the ANC president and what could be another term as president of South Africa. Members of the ANC in the Sekhukhune Region in Limpopo on Tuesday threw their weight behind Ramaphosa to serve a second term as party leader as lobbying begins ahead of the party&#8217;s elective conference at the end of the year. [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/politics\/2022-01-05-limpopo-anc-region-declares-its-support-for-cyril-ramaphosas-second-term\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TimesLive<\/a><\/strong>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mechanical failure:<\/strong> A new report has found that the fire doors installed in Parliament were rendered useless in stopping the blaze that ravaged the building on 2 January because &#8220;cheap latches&#8221; were installed to keep the doors open. The latches prevented the fire doors from closing and, as a result, did nothing to mitigate the spread of the fire. [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/news24\/southafrica\/news\/exclusive-fire-doors-in-parliament-kept-open-with-latches-report-finds-20220106\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News24<\/a><\/strong>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>State<\/strong> <strong>capture<\/strong>: South Africa is still grappling with the fallout of the Zondo report, with the ruling ANC heavily criticised for failing to take action to halt the state capture that weakened the country\u2019s democracy. The government and the ruling party failed dismally to make any effective interventions to halt the decline. Either they did not care, slept on the job, or they had no clue what to do, said commission chair Raymond Zondo. [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2022-01-05-zondo-anc-watched-as-state-coffers-were-plundered\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BusinessDay<\/a><\/strong>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Eased<\/strong> <strong>restrictions<\/strong>: As fears of the Omicron variant begin to subside locally and globally, countries and airlines are slowly easing travel restrictions on South Africa. Middle-eastern airline Qatar Airways is the latest group to restart operations as it is set to resume carrying outbound passengers from South Africa from 13 January. [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/news\/qatar-airways-resume-outbound-flights-sa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">eNCA<\/a><\/strong>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markets: <\/strong>The rand rallied on Wednesday, recovering from the previous day&#8217;s losses, as the dollar dipped and safe-haven gold gained before the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve&#8217;s latest policy meeting. On Thursday, the rand was trading at R15.93\/$, R18.03\/\u20ac and R21.58\/\u00a3. [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/markets\/stocks\/south-africas-rand-weakens-fed-rate-bets-lift-dollar-2022-01-05\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a><\/strong>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ramaphosa has received his first endorsement for a second term as the ANC president; a new report shows cheap latches could be responsible for failing to stop the parliament fire; the country continues to grapple with allegations of the Zondo report, and South Africa sees eased travel restrictions as Omicron fears subside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":536986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-548934","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\/548934","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=548934"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548958,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548934\/revisions\/548958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}