Seth Thorne

 

Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:

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• Johannesburg has not had a day without water outages in 2024: Experts have warned that Joburg’s water woes are likely to persist and possibly worsen in 2024. For the past two years, lack of infrastructure maintenance has culminated in outages that have lasted for days – and even weeks – in some areas. Every week this year has seen an outage in the city. [News24]

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• The plan to tackle current high load shedding levels: Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that Eskom’s plan to deal with stages 5 and 6 load shedding is to “to work directly with the original equipment manufacturers so that they do not go through the middleman… engaging with the people who designed these units,” after 4,400 MW was taken off of the grid due to boiler tube leaks at nine units. [BusinessTech]

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• High Court criticizes police investigation into Intercape bus attacks: The Eastern Cape Division of the High Court has ruled that there has been a failure to properly investigate the ongoing attacks on Intercape busses. The police were ordered to investigate these attacks, which are allegedly orchestrated by rogue taxi associations, as instances of organised crime. [amaBhungane]

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• Sanlam to buy distributor of Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger watches: Cape Town-based financial services firm Sanlam is about to acquire Bacher, a distributor and wholesaler of popular household brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss. This is for an undisclosed sum as the company ramps up its acquisition activity.[Business Day]

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• Markets: The rand weakened over the weekend, with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation having little impact on markets, investors and traders. On Monday (12 February), the rand was trading at R19.05 to the dollar, R24.04 to the pound, and R20.53 to the euro. Oil is trading at $81.85 a barrel. [Nasdeq]

Article taken from BusinessTech