Here\u2019s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stage 7 load shedding warning:<\/strong> South Africa has returned to the brink of Stage 7 amid freezing weather, power plant breakdowns and increased maintenance. A cold front started to hit parts of South Africa on Tuesday, which saw power demand surpass what Eskom expected. On Wednesday, as the cold front intensified, Eskom asked South Africans to cut their power use to avoid higher load shedding stages beyond Stage 6. [BusinessTech<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Striking oil could be gold for SA’s GDP:<\/strong>\u00a0Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said during his address at the annual Southern Africa Oil and Gas Conference that accessing and developing South Africa’s oil and gas resources has the potential to change the fate of the economy and could spur GDP growth to as high as 8%. “South Africa has a responsibility to ensure it exploits deposits and converts them into wealth for the country in order to tackle unemployment, poverty and inequality,” he said. [News24<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retirement fund warning:<\/strong> Public servants have been warned against withdrawing from their retirement savings when the two-pot system starts in March 2024. Former acting director-general of the National Treasury Ismail Momoniat noted that public servants would be allowed to withdraw a maximum of R2,000 per year but said this could be detrimental in the long run, and servants should seek financial advance regarding the new system. [Daily Investor<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let bygones be bygones:<\/strong> Following the tensions between South Africa and the USA that threatened our African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) membership, US consul-general Vincent Spera wants to put the bad blood behind the two countries. The Agoa forum, to be hosted by SA in November, is about \u201cpotential and moving forward and building on the strengths of our relationship\u201d, he said. \u201cThe Agoa forum is about prosperity. If you look at the overall US-SA relationship, the engagement between the two countries is only expanding \u2026 we are very proud of our strategic relationship with SA and are committed to continue,\u201d he added. [Business Day<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Markets<\/strong>: South Africa’s rand strengthened on Wednesday after the release of U.S. inflation data that could give the Federal Reserve a cushion to keep interest rates on hold at its meeting next week. On Thursday (14 September), the rand was trading at R18.77\/USD, R20.18\/EUR and R23.47\/GBP. Oil is trading at $92.37 a barrel. [Reuters<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa has returned to the brink of Stage 7 lad shedding; Gwede Mantashe says oil and gas exploration is the key to jump start the economy; Former acting director-general of the National Treasury warns of the new two-pot retirement system; and the USA wants to move forward with SA ahead of Agoa forum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":685017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[853],"class_list":["post-718360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718360","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=718360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718380,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718360\/revisions\/718380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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