Toes on the edge of the abyss
Pravin Gordhan. Picture: ALON SKUY
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Within a few days a competent, courageous, honourable and hard working finance minister could no longer be in office. In a way, Pravin Gordhan may have to go. The president, Jacob Zuma, doesn’t want him in the job and the ANC, the ruling party, cannot summon up the courage or the vision to defend him. He will in all probability be replaced by the current chief executive of Eskom, Brian Molefe.
Gordhan has done the only thing that can be reasonably expected of him. He will not, today, present himself as instructed at the Pretoria headquarters of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks). That is because the Hawks have been unable to tell him what crime he has committed. Tasked by Zuma with the job of finding something, anything, to charge Gordhan with (so that he can then be required to step aside while investigations continue), they have failed hopelessly. They have tried to implicate him in the establishment of a “rogue unit”, an intelligence squad with Sars while he was boss of the tax authority. But even though that might not be allowed under the constitution, it is not actually illegal to have done so. And Gordhan has written permission from his minister at the time, Trevor Manuel, to set up the unit. Now they are trying to concoct a sort of human resource policy breach. They say Gordhan agreed to allow one of his senior staff (Ivan Pillay) to take early retirement. And, er, that’s it.
Or maybe not it. If the Hawks cannot get rid of him in a plausible way, then two things may happen. Either they will charge him anyway and Zuma could then reluctantly ask him to resign because of the cloud over him. That’s what Thabo Mbeki did to Zuma when he removed him as deputy president. Or Zuma will simply remove him in a reshuffle following the recent disastrous ANC performance in the August 3 local government elections. That reshuffle is imminent and, for Zuma, urgent. He needs to shore up his dominance of the party while his critics inside it run around like headless chickens, desperate as they are to find a way of coming to terms with the loss of Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg. Zuma needs to be able to control his succession in order to continue to avoid being charged on multiple counts of fraud and to satisfy the queues of cronies and tenderpreneurs for more access to more of the state. Gordhan stands in his way. Molefe will not.
Zuma has little time. His close friend Dudu Myeni at SAA urgently needs treasury to reissue the guarantees the airline needs to stay afloat. Gordhan refuses to give them while Myeni is chair. By September 6, if the guarantees are not in place, the authorities in Hong Kong will no longer allow SAA to land there and could seize any SAA aircraft on the tarmac. As I understand it, a new board has been put to cabinet but Myeni’s name is still on it, and still as chair. Whatever his relationship with Myeni is, Zuma is about to sacrifice the creditworthiness of Africa’s largest and most advanced economy for it. Any new finance minister would be required immediately to issue the guarantees. Zuma will ask for such an assurance in writing. If Molefe is indeed offered the job and declines to sign then Zuma will move on to the next name on the list until he finds someone who will.
Of course, there is the small matter of Zuma being out of the country for the next two weeks. Can you reshuffle a cabinet remotely? You could if it was already all set up. I would also expect, by the way, energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson to go. Her crime is too much enthusiasm for renewable power. Perhaps the Hawks could investigate her too. There may also be a clean-out of SACP ministers like Blade Nzimande and Rob Davies.
Economists and analysts watching Zuma at work are alarmed that he seems not to care about the macroeconomic damage he will do to SA. They don’t get that he really doesn’t care. His audience is the ANC internal machine, and the “narrative” he has to spin is about treasury being a hindrance to transformation and growth because it is still a bastion of apartheid. The Gupta family directly assist in this. Here, just to kick off, is the Business Day lead: Hawks have no case, says Gordhan. I have to say that Business Day’s reporting on this billowing crisis has been exemplary. Here Carol Paton and Natasha Marrian outline just how the “narrative” I mentioned is being woven through the various ANC factions as Zuma works to justify what he is about to do. It’s a very important piece: NEWS ANALYSIS: Mission is to create narrative justifying Pravin Gordhan’s removal.And here is the newspaper’s powerful editorial today, basically calling for Zuma to resign. It won’t happen but it probably has to be said: EDITORIAL: Stand up — or stand down.
Finally, just to drive home the severity and urgency of the crisis at SAA there has been another resignation from its board, this time from one of the few remaining nonexecutive directors, who leaves citing the risk to her reputation as an accountant if she is still a director when (if) the airline goes bust:SAA plunged into crisis as another board member resigns.