Pravin Gordhan – SA’s last bulwark between taxpayers and outright tenderpreneur plunder

By Alec Hogg

Do you still trust South Africa’s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, she asked. After all, he did vote with the rest of the ANC for Zuma to remain President?

Her question came a couple hours before Marianne Thamm’s article in The Daily Maverick sent the Rand into a 50c tailspin. Thamm told us Gordhan together with his top team during a decade as SA’s admired Tax Commissioner, had been summoned to appear on Thursday before the Police’s special Hawks unit. The body fiercely loyal to President Jacob Zuma will issue them with “warning statements” – the last step before criminal charges are laid.

So after all Gordhan’s efforts to stabilise global sentiment and postpone SA’s inevitable credit downgrade to junk, he is once again the lightning rod for a petty politician on a crash-and-burn mission. Zuma, a deeply flawed man, jerks between greed and fear. We see his greed when political power swings his way. Fear when he’s embattled, as is the case right now after an election where hundreds of former ANC councillors are suddenly unemployed.

My response to her question? Gordhan is one of the last bulwarks between taxpayers and outright tenderpreneur plunder. After yesterday, that fact is even more obvious.