It was hard to squeeze through the exit door of the good ship South Africa between 2009 and December 2017. The place was crowded. Members of that rarely spotted mammal, the “foreign investor”, were clutching at the door handle with their sweaty palms, ready to race out. It was the Zuma era, known as the notoriously “nine wasted years”.
The man who often calmed these nervous investors was Enoch Godongwana. Whenever the ANC threatened nationalisation or some other destructive policy, Godongwana would find a way to let investors know his comrades were, as usual, emitting hot air and there was no serious intention to adopt such policies.
Godongwana, now the finance minister, was the ANC’s “investor whisperer” for more than a decade. He was brilliant at navigating the ANC’s many constituencies — from the trade unions, the youth and women’s leagues to the communists — and factions. He held off populists while protecting the serious and diligent policy wonks in the party’s economics unit.
There is no-one in the ANC now to protect him, except President Cyril Ramaphosa
Yet now, with the government in debt and its revenues collapsing, he is at the mercy of loud, populist and relentless enemies. Whereas Godongwana protected Pravin Gordhan, Nhlanhla Nene and Tito Mboweni when they were in the finance ministry, there is no-one in the ANC now to protect him, except President Cyril Ramaphosa. Can he survive the party’s bitter internal battles?
His first area of exposure is the ANC’s economic transformation subcommittee which, ironically, he led until a year ago. Under the neophyte human settlements minister, Mmamoloko Kubayi, the economics unit seems to be in the hands of individuals who have never familiarised themselves with the constitution or come across an income and expenditure statement. In July, for example, the subcommittee asked Godongwana to hold urgent talks with the Reserve Bank to discuss ways to address the surging cost of living “other than raising interest rates”.
Godongwana rebuffed it. “I’m not in discussion with the central bank on that matter,” he said a few weeks later. “The central bank in South Africa, by constitution, is independent and its purpose is defined as that of protecting the value of the currency in the interests of balanced growth.”
After news emerged two months ago that the National Treasury had warned that South Africa is broke and austerity measures are urgently needed, Kubayi told the Mail & Guardian the department had sought to usurp the powers of the president by informing him the country was broke. She said the Treasury’s proposals were “unfortunate”, “illegal” and a “tick-box exercise”. So, no protection there for Godongwana.
Collen Malatji, the new ANC Youth League boss whose sole ambition seems to be to spew more outrageous bile than his predecessor, Julius Malema, says Godongwana must be fired for saying there is no money to fund National Health Insurance (NHI). Or anything else, really.
Just because you wish for something doesn’t mean you automatically have the money for it
“[Godongwana] must start making sure that there is money for NHI because we have committed to South Africans that we will give them quality universal health care, whether rich or poor,” Malatji told the Sunday World. This is an incredible bit of economics. Just because you wish for something doesn’t mean you automatically have the money for it.
South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Solly Mapaila said the ANC must call Godongwana to order publicly for his utterances on the NHI and for proposing belt-tightening measures.
“Who is Godongwana’s handler if he does not follow mandate from the ANC in alliance with the SACP and the progressive trade union and civic movements?” he railed.
So, what happens to Godongwana now? He will deliver his medium-term budget on November 1. There is no doubt about that. Yet, the guns are trained on him. He has no defenders in an ANC where few or no leaders have a spine. Will he deliver the budget in February? I think so. But after next year’s election, all bets are off.
And, for the first time in 30 years, I can’t even suggest a successor who would be a “safe pair of hands” for South Africa’s poor and for business. The likes of Mcebisi Jonas and others who could have been suitable are lost to the private sector.
It’s “populist central” out there.
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