Here is what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SA city crumbling: <\/strong>An investigation by BusinessTech into key towns in South Africa has shown that they are in dire straits. Most recently, a trip to Rustenburg\u2014the ‘Platinum City’\u2014revealed financial and political woes, coupled with ageing and neglected infrastructure. These problems have created a perfect storm of service delivery challenges, bringing many residents and businesses to their knees. [BusinessTech<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n State bank liquidation: <\/strong>Customers of the state-owned Ithala were left hanging when their accounts were frozen amid liquidation processes. The Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority applied for the liquidation of Ithala to safeguard the interests of its more than 257,000 depositors. The SOC never had a banking licence, but rather an exemption granted by the finance minister to accept deposits. It was mainly used for stokvels and funeral clubs in more vulnerable communities. [TimesLive<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russian deal implodes: <\/strong>State petroleum group PetroSA controversially chose to partner with Russia’s Gazprombank Africa to restart a gas-to-liquids refinery in Mossel Bay. A year later, the R3.7 billion deal appears to be on the brink of collapse after the Russian bank failed to deliver on its financial commitments. [amaBhungane<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inflation update:<\/strong> Stats SA will publish the latest inflation data today, with economists anticipating a slight rise from the last two months, where CPI dropped to unexpectedly low levels. Following a drop under the Reserve Bank’s target range of 3%-6%, economists now expect the inflation numbers to re-enter it. Projections are for inflation to come in at 3% or more, and to average 3.6% for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Markets: <\/strong>The rand had a shaky day on Tuesday following the inauguration of US president Donald Trump, eventually settling around the R18.53\/$ level as markets started taking a wait-and-see approach to his new policies. Locally, mining output fell 0.9% year on year in November compared to a revised increase of 1.1% in October. On Wednesday, the rand is trading at R18.50\/USD, R22.84\/GBP and R19.26\/EUR. Oil dropped below $80 to trade at $79.10 a barrel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are 5 important things happening in South Africa today (22 January 2025).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":807742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20398],"tags":[21500,21438,10185,2924,21473,1809],"class_list":["post-808014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5-things","tag-gazprombank","tag-ithala","tag-petrosa","tag-reserve-bank","tag-rustenburg","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808014","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=808014"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808020,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808014\/revisions\/808020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n