{"id":655901,"date":"2023-01-13T08:26:05","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T06:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=655901"},"modified":"2023-01-13T08:26:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T06:26:05","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1444","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/655901\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1444\/","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>Paying for corruption:<\/strong> Opposition parties have lashed out at energy regulator Nersa&#8217;s approval for a 18.65% electricity price hike in 2023, saying that the group is handing more money to Eskom to be looted. Action SA leader Herman Mashaba said that the regulator has failed to take into account Eskom&#8217;s own failures to clean up its act and sort out its operations, and thus any additional money it gets will likely go straight into corrupt hands. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.enca.com\/news\/nersa-handing-eskom-government-more-money-be-looted-mashaba\">ENCA<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Best economic policy pointless with load shedding:<\/strong> Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says the best macroeconomic policy is useless if there is no electricity. Speaking at the Pre-World Economic Forum (WEF) business breakfast, the minister says his department wants to ensure that Eskom has a healthy balance sheet so that the embattled power utility can produce far more efficiently. He added that crime and failing logistics &#8211; specifically Transnet &#8211; also make the best macro-economic policy futile. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanews.gov.za\/south-africa\/economic-growth-facing-challenges-godongwana\">SANews<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Vaccines prevent measles outbreak<\/strong>: National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) says the current measles outbreak can be contained with vaccination. Over 300 cases of measles have been reported in the last three months in five provinces &#8211; ages of laboratory-confirmed cases range from two months to 42 years. The NICD will urgently continue vaccination with planned vaccination campaigns and advises parents to keep their child&#8217;s vaccination records to confirm that they&#8217;ve had the vaccine. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2023-01-12-vaccination-the-only-way-to-prevent-and-control-measles-outbreak-nicd\/\">TimesLive<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Eskom needs to find the best person for CEO:<\/strong> Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala says an international candidate should be considered for outgoing Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter&#8217;s role &#8211; as long as their goals are consistent with South Africa&#8217;s. Tshabalala added South Africa should be confident of its national competitive advantage to find the best candidate &#8211; preferably one with experience in running major power utilities. The search for a new CEO will likely be complicated due to an alleged attempted murder of De Ruyter. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2023-01-12-sim-tshabalala-urges-sa-to-be-bold-in-search-for-new-eskom-boss\/\">BusinessDay]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markets<\/strong>:\u00a0 The rand strengthened against the dollar &#8211; dropping further below the\u00a0 R17.00\/$ &#8211; on Thursday. This comes after U.S. data showed signs that inflation was on a sustained downward trend, which potentially allows the U.S. federal reserve to slow down its monetary policy tightening. On Friday (13 January), the rand was trading at R16.73\/$, R18.15\/\u20ac, and R20.41\/\u00a3. Brent crude is trading at $83.69 a barrel. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/africa\/south-african-rand-flat-focus-us-inflation-data-2023-01-12\/\">Reuters<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opposition parties say Eskom&#8217;s tariff hike will only feed corruption and looting; load shedding damages economic policy; NICD calls for vaccination against measles; international candidates should be considered for Eskom CEO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":527066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-655901","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\/655901","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=655901"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655943,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655901\/revisions\/655943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}