First Take SA

Refugees have gathered near the Cape Town Central Police Station to hand themselves over for arrest. This, after the sheriff of the court gave them options either to get into buses that will take them to their homes, or face arrest for trespassing. They chose to be arrested.

Close to 300 foreign nationals have been removed from the street outside the Central Methodist Church in the Cape Town CBD. They have been living on the pavement along Burg and Longmarket Streets since October last year. A large group of law enforcement officers loaded the personal possessions of the foreign nationals onto trucks.

At least 151 South Africans, out of 201 - living in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the corona virus are expected to be repatriated by government in about ten days after the completion of the logistics. The inter-ministerial committee which includes the ministers of Health, Home Affairs, briefed the media on how the repatriation process will happen.

Passenger Rail Association of South Africa (Prasa) LAST NIGHT confirmed that train operations had returned to near normal. This after thousands of commuters were left stranded yesterday when Eskom cut off power to all metro-rail operations in Cape Town. PRASA says Eskom disconnected power to metrorail as a result of an overdue payment.

Finance minister, Tito Mboweni, in his budget speech on Wednesday, warned Religious Organisations to operate within the strict boundaries of the law to continue enjoying its tax exempt status. Mboweni highlighted that they will be keeping a close eye on non-compliance by some religious and public benefit organisations.

Insurance companies say they have picked up an increase in claims over the last few months. While the South African Insurance Association says they cannot pin this increase on loadshedding, the rise in claims has coincided with the re-introduction of loadshedding a few months ago. City Power also says only 10 claims they have had so far, were due to loadshedding.

Cosatu has accused Finance Minister Tito Mboweni of being irresponsible and reckless on his proposed cuts to the public sector wage bill. This came at a media briefing in Johannesburg following the conclusion of its Central Executive Committee meeting. The labour federation was responding to the minister's budget votes presented in Parliament on Wednesday and other issues affecting workers.

Debt servicing costs are among government's top four expenditure items in the 2020/21 budget allocations. This receives about 25 percent of the total expenditure, pushing it into fourth position on the list of allocations.

Government says tax revenue is expected to be significantly lower than the previous estimates. It says low growth and a weakened SARS have led to the 63-point-3 billion Rand projected revenue shortfall for 2019/2020- this is significantly higher than the revised shortfall of 52 billion Rands published in the 2019 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement. Government also says debt is unlikely to stabilise over the medium term- while debt servicing costs now absorb 15-point-2 percent of the main budget revenue. This is currently standing at 229 billion Rands- largely as a result of bailouts from financially distressed State Owned Entities.

The EFF has called for an inquiry into the removal of its MPL's during the Eastern Cape State of the Province Address in Bisho yesterday. The party says it finds it appalling that the speaker of the house, Helen Sauls August, called upon the house's security to forcibly remove EFF MPL's over their attire or dress code. Clad in their symbolic red-overalls, black boots and mine safety hats, the EFF MPL's were physically dragged and wrestled out of the Raymond Mhlaba Chambers in full view of the media