{"id":620109,"date":"2022-08-26T08:01:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T06:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=620109"},"modified":"2022-08-26T08:01:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T06:01:28","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1351","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/620109\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1351\/","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<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Insurer raids:<\/strong> Legal experts say the Competition Commission must have received solid evidence of price fixing and collusion to obtain the necessary warrants to raid some of the biggest insurers in the country. The commission launched raids on Discovery, Momentum, Sanlam and five others on Thursday, claiming the insurers have been sharing information on premium rates for risk-related products and fees for investment products since January 2021. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/fin24\/companies\/insurers-accused-of-sharing-passcodes-as-they-are-hit-by-historic-dawn-raids-20220826\">Fin24<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Passports:<\/strong> Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the South African passport has become a laughing stock internationally. He said that South African passports had come under increased abuse by undocumented foreign nationals, some of whom entered the country illegally. Motsoaledi was giving oral replies in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), where he was quizzed about intensifying the security of South African passports. [<a href=\"https:\/\/ewn.co.za\/0001\/01\/01\/sa-passport-used-to-be-respected-all-around-the-world-home-affairs-motsoaledi\">EWN<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>SAPS tools:<\/strong> South Africa&#8217;s police force is stuck without tools to conduct forensic investigations, with licences for the software they use long expired. This means that software and hardware crucial to obtaining and analysing digital evidence from devices like smartphones, laptops and surveillance cameras cannot be used in investigations or court cases pursuing criminals. A tender was sent out in 2020 to update the SAPS&#8217; IT capacity but has not gone anywhere. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2022-08-25-colossal-crisis-entire-saps-without-digital-forensic-tools-after-massive-it-tender-stalls\/\">Daily Maverick<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Blame game:<\/strong> The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs has hit back at the City of Johannesburg, which tried to blame the department for a massive hike in rates for private schools in the metro. Schools were hit with the news earlier this month and launched court action to stop it. Joburg&#8217;s executive said the rate hikes were due to legislation passed by Cogta. However, Cogta said it has nothing to do with setting rates, and the hike was solely the city council&#8217;s determination. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/cogta-breaks-silence-slams-joburg-mayors-blame-game-on-school-rates-debacle\/\">Moneyweb<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markets<\/strong>: South Africa&#8217;s rand strengthened against the dollar on Thursday as investors waited for a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for further clues about the ongoing pace of the US central bank&#8217;s rate hikes. Statistics South Africa figures on Thursday showed July producer inflation came in above expectations at 18.0% versus predictions for 17.6%, adding pressure. On Friday, the rand was trading at R16.79\/$, R16.72\/\u20ac and R19.82\/\u00a3. Brent crude is trading at $100 a barrel. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasdaq.com\/articles\/south-african-rand-strengthens-ahead-of-fed-chairs-speech\">Reuters<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legal experts say South Africa&#8217;s largest insurers aren&#8217;t be raided on a whim &#8211; there has to be solid evidence of price fixing; Motsoaledi says the SA passport has become a laughing stock; the SAPS is reportedly sitting without forensic investigation tools; and Cogta and Joburg play the blame game over rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":461810,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-620109","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\/620109","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=620109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620123,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620109\/revisions\/620123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}