Pravin Gordhan, who passed away this week, was a respected ANC Cabinet Minister renowned for his battle against state capture and his two terms as Finance Minister. Tributes have poured in, highlighting his pivotal role in strengthening the South African Revenue Service against state capture, with whistleblower Johann van Loggerenberg dubbing him a “superhero.” In the heady days of the nineties, following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and amidst the negotiations for a new Constitution at Kempton Park, Gordhan was entrusted to lead the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and the Transitional Executive Council (TEC), which set the stage for the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Working closely with Gordhan at that time was Theuns Eloff, who served as the head of administration for the multiparty negotiation process. Eloff described Gordhan in an interview with Biznews as a principled negotiator and facilitator who understood compromise in order to reach the best solution. “There were three individuals during the negotiations who, behind the scenes and not in the public limelight, really made the process work: Mac Maharaj, Fanie van der Merwe, and Pravin Gordhan.” Regarding the criticism levelled at Gordhan over his handling of state-owned enterprises, Eloff asserted that what he accomplished during the negotiations and as Finance Minister overshadows “any rightful criticisms one might have regarding his time at Public Enterprises.” He concluded that Gordhan’s legacy is “largely positive.”
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Linda van Tilburg (00:00.758)
Pravin Gordhan, who passed away this week, was a respected ANC cabinet minister renowned for his battle against state capture and his two terms as finance minister. Tributes have flooded in, highlighting his pivotal role in strengthening the South African Revenue Service, or SARS, against state capture, with whistleblower Johann van Loggerenberg dubbing him a superhero.
In the heady days of the 90s, after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, and in the midst of negotiating a new constitution at Kempton Park, Gordhan was entrusted to lead the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, or CODESA, and the Transitional Executive Council, or the TEC, which set the stage for the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Working closely with Gordhan at that time was Dr. Theuns Eloff, who was the head of administration of the multi-party negotiation process.
So, Theuns, what can you tell us about the man you worked with so closely during the Kempton Park years?
Theuns Eloff (01:17.075)
Pravin was an unassuming person on the face of it. He was a trained dentist; I don’t know whether he ever practised in the industry. I met him at CODESA, during the first round of negotiations, and he was formerly a member of the Natal Indian Congress, but obviously, I think also a member of the ANC. Perhaps, as one looks at his later positions when he was Minister of State Enterprises, he was probably also a member of the SACP, but I never knew that.
I think the most important role that he played was as part of a 10-person planning committee consisting of a number of parties across the spectrum, who acted as a sort of executive but without executive powers to filter all the proposals that came from the technical negotiating committees. It would come to the planning committee first; if we thought there were issues there, then it would be referred back. The planning committee rotated chairs, so there wasn’t just one chair, and the same happened with the negotiating council. One of the problems in the first CODESA was that people felt that some of the chairs were not impartial. So, what we did with the multi-party negotiating process was to ask parties to nominate people who they thought would be good and impartial chairs. People like Pravin, Dawie de Villiers, and a number of others from all parties were then on a rotating panel, and he was one of those chairs, and he did extremely well. He was a very good chair.
As a member of the planning committee, we worked closely together, and some of the viewers would remember that there were two people who really—informally but very effectively—oiled the wheels of the process, namely, Mac Maharaj and Fanie van der Merwe. One could say that Pravin was almost a third member of that little committee. If there seemed to be a problem somewhere, a deadlock or such, he would often join Mac and Fanie. In the planning committee, he was really looking for a way forward through compromises. Even at that time, one felt his integrity; you could trust him. I knew that we differed ideologically. Obviously, my ideology wasn’t important; I was the administrator, but one knew that he was left-leaning and probably a socialist. However, in that process, I and others felt that we could trust him to make the best and make the process work.
You would remember that many people wanted the process to fail, not only inside the negotiations but also outside. I can really say that the man I got to know was a principled negotiator, but he was also a facilitator. He understood compromise. He understood that both sides, or often it was more than one side, had to make compromises to get us to the best solution. So, I would say that together with, obviously in the background, Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, and then more in the foreground, Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, I would single out Fanie van der Merwe and Mac Maharaj, as the three people who, behind the scenes, not in the public limelight, really made the process work.
Linda van Tilburg (05:08.277)
I covered the negotiations for the SABC, and I see you’ve got a picture of the World Trade Centre, which was a former factory that overnight turned into this centre where it all took place. I think we spent five years or something there, all the way up to the elections, and I always remember him as a very calm presence. To the media, he was always very accommodating. In your personal relations working with him, did you find that?
Theuns Eloff (05:42.483)
Yes, absolutely. He was sympathetic; he was understanding. One felt that you could go to him as a member of the planning committee and say, “We’ve got a problem here,” and he wouldn’t act like a member of the Natal Indian Congress or the ANC. So, that was the type of role he played, and I think he really meant it. He was very honest; his integrity showed. So, one felt that one could trust him. One of my colleagues, Gillian Hutchings, who took the minutes of all those meetings, said that he was one of the most open people, and she never felt that he looked down on her. She came from an administrative, secretarial background, and she felt she could ask him anything, and he wouldn’t take it amiss whether she knew something or not.
Linda van Tilburg (06:32.723)
Did you keep in touch?
Theuns Eloff (06:36.477)**
We didn’t really. I think when he became a minister—let me first say on a personal note—if you’re facilitating or helping processes, when the parties meet each other and they reach an agreement, then the facades, the sort of work that helps the negotiations, fall away. I understood that. We met once or twice at conferences, and it was a cordial relationship, but we didn’t really get in personal touch.
Linda van Tilburg (07:10.42)
His role at SARS and as finance minister is undisputed, and he was also relentlessly pursued by the former public protector, Busisiwe Mkwebane, over allegations of a so-called rogue unit at SARS. At the same time, as Minister of Public Enterprises, he faced some criticism for his state-centric approach to the state-owned enterprises and was also accused of being unapproachable. What are your thoughts on what seems to be a bit of a duality about his legacy?
Theuns Eloff (07:41.917)
I wasn’t close to that, and I know as much as anyone who read the media and watched the media. My sense was that there was a blind spot there and that he, like many of us when we get older, became more entrenched in his ideological views about the role of the state and the role of the ANC.
Obviously, he had to play a different role there than he had to play at the negotiations. At the negotiations, he was expected to play a facilitating, accommodating, compromising role. Here, under difficult circumstances, he had to run those enterprises, and he stuck to his guns by saying that the state must own SAA and that the state must play a role.
I think the first blind spot is that he became more statist than he had been. The second one is where I did meet him fairly recently, at a conference before the election, where a group of NGOs, many of them ANC-aligned, got together and basically said that they were not happy with what the ANC was doing, and they criticised the ANC heavily, and he was there. I know Roelf Meyer was there, although not anymore in an ANC capacity, obviously, and one or two others. I heard from Roelf afterwards that he (Gordhan) was very perturbed by the negativity towards the ANC.
So, I think what happened to many other ANC leaders, including our president, also happened to him; he became insulated from the people on the ground, and it was a shock to him that people who used to be ANC supporters could publicly, because it was a public meeting, be so critical of the ANC. In that sense, he may have perhaps worked too hard, he wasn’t well-briefed, or he may have surrounded himself with people who thought like that. I think he lost touch with the people on the ground, and that may be another reason why he was criticised for the part he played during that time.
Linda van Tilburg (10:04.681)
He was always close to Cyril Ramaphosa, the president. We talked about that time; how important it was that Ramaphosa remained a staunch supporter of Pravin.
Theuns Eloff (10:17.171)
Yes, yes. I think especially because of his opposition to Zuma and that he came out in a principled way. I don’t know whether Cyril agreed with him all the way—I can’t think that Cyril would—but the problem, obviously, that people often don’t understand, whether it’s Pravin Gordhan or anyone else, is that if you’re a president and you’ve appointed someone, you understand that you’ve appointed him or her for certain reasons, that 60% of what they do or think you may agree with, but there’s always a 30% or 40% that you don’t, and you must accommodate that and decide all the while, “Can I let him remain a minister even though I don’t agree with him?” I’m sure there were many informal discussions about SAA, etc. I think they were still close, and what Cyril also said in his remarks after Gordhan’s death shows that, but I don’t think they necessarily agreed on all the ideas around public enterprises.
Linda van Tilburg (11:27.08)
So, would you say his legacy is primarily what he did during that negotiation process?
Theuns Eloff (11:33.795)
What he did at SARS and as finance minister, I think that overshadows any rightful criticism that one might have regarding his time at Public Enterprises. I think what I find very sad and almost reprehensible are the comments that were made on social media about him. I’m not just talking about the EFF, but there were quite a number of South Africans whose social media commentary brought the fact that he was an Indian South African to the fore.
If you had asked me whether Pravin ever referred to himself as an Indian, I would say I never heard him do so; it just wasn’t part of his being. He was a South African and he was an ANC member. I would refer more to myself as an Afrikaner and a South African than he did as an Indian. So, I think that’s unfair and a bit sad, but it says more about those people than it does about him.
So, I think, if I had to summarise, his legacy is largely positive.
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