October 24, 2019.

For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sashnee Moodley.

Making headlines:

Maimane resigns from DA and Parliament

Equality court rules in EFF’s favour in intimidation case

And, South Africa slips to 84 in Doing Business ranking

Maimane resigns from DA and Parliament

Mmusi Maimane has announced that he has resigned from the DA and as a member of Parliament.

In a message posted to Twitter, Maimane wrote it had been the greatest honour to serve the country before he announced his resignation from the party.

This follows his resignation as DA leader on Wednesday. DA federal chairperson Athol Trollip followed suit by announcing his own resignation. On Monday Herman Mashaba resigned from his position as mayor of the City of Johannesburg.

Equality court rules in EFF’s favour in intimidation case

The Equality Court, sitting in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has ruled against the South African National Editors Forum and five journalists in an application to interdict the EFF from intimidating, harassing and assaulting journalists.

The court heard arguments from both parties over two days.

In its argument, the EFF submitted that the court should not "waste its time" and said the case should be dismissed with no costs order because there would be no winners.

The application was dismissed with no costs.

South Africa slips to 84 in Doing Business ranking

South Africa’s position in the World Bank’s latest ‘Ease of Doing Business Ranking’ has deteriorated, dropping to 84 out of the 190 countries surveyed, from 82 in the previous report.

South Africa’s fall comes despite government’s stated commitment to reforms that will improve policy certainty and reduce red tape, as well as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s target of materially improving South Africa’s ranking in the yearly Doing Business report.

New Zealand once again topped the ranking, followed by Singapore and Denmark, while Somalia, Eritrea and Venezuela propped up the table.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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