{"id":684083,"date":"2023-05-02T08:17:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T06:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=684083"},"modified":"2023-05-02T08:17:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T06:17:51","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1516","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/684083\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1516\/","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>Eskom&#8217;s diesel issues:<\/strong> Eskom has yet to finalise its budget for the current financial year, which started on 1 April. In the last financial year, Eskom spent R21 billion on diesel for its emergency generation fleet to compensate for its coal-powered generation fleet&#8217;s failures and prevent higher stages of load shedding. The R21 billion was three times the size of the initially budgeted R6.1 billion. Despite only being a month into the current financial year, Eskom has already spent R1.2 billion on diesel. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2023-05-01-eskom-still-finalising-diesel-budget-for-the-year-after-burning-through-r21bn\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Business Day<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Fossil fuel investment stays<\/strong>: Despite being the largest South African investor in coal, oil and gas, the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) says it will not divest from fossil fuels. Although the GEPF said that it remained committed to the just energy transition, it noted that it had to account for the social and economic factors of South Africa and could not follow a uniform international approach. Moreover, it said that first-world nations should be held mainly responsible for cutting emissions. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/fin24\/climate_future\/news\/gepf-is-sas-biggest-investor-in-fossil-fuels-but-says-first-world-must-cut-emissions-20230502\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News24<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sasol awaits approval<\/strong>: Sasol is still awaiting approval from the Competition Committee to sell its sodium cyanide business. When the interested parties initially applied for approval, the committee said that selling the nation&#8217;s only producer of sodium cyanide could hurt the domestic mining industry and decided to block the deal. Speaking to the Competition Tribunal, mining group Sibanye-Stillwater said that the sale to Czech firm Draslovka would increase prices, as local users would be charged an import-parity price. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/companies-and-deals\/sasol-still-waiting-for-approval-to-sell-cyanide-business\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Moneyweb<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>New Joburg Mayor:<\/strong> The City of Johannesburg will elect a new Mayor later today. Al Jama-ah\u2019s Thapelo Amad resigned from the position last week ahead of a motion of no confidence &#8211; only serving as Mayor for three months. The DA said its caucus leader and former Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse would be its mayoral candidate. It remains to be seen if the ANC will again back a candidate from a smaller party. [<a href=\"https:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2023\/05\/02\/city-of-joburg-to-elect-a-new-mayor-amid-coalition-squabbles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EWN<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markets<\/strong>: South African markets return today following a long holiday weekend, and because the underlying external narrative is little changed, USD\/ZAR continues to trade lower. March data released on Friday showed a deterioration in the South African\u00a0<span id=\"x1\">trade surplus<\/span> and a larger-than-expected\u00a0<span id=\"x2\">budget<\/span> deficit. On Tuesday (2 May), the rand was trading at R18.40\/$, R20.20\/\u20ac, and R22.99\/\u00a3. Brent crude is trading at $79.38 a barrel. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasdaq.com\/articles\/buzz-comment-south-africas-rand-caught-between-internal-and-external-factors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nasdaq<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom still has not finalised its diesel budget, Government Employees Pension Fund will not divest from fossil fuels, Sasol awaits Competition Committee approval, Johannesburg to elect a new Mayor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":655573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-684083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684083","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684127,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684083\/revisions\/684127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}