In 2018, when Tito Mboweni replaced Nhlanhla Nene, I said he was likely to become SA’s most colourful and opinionated finance minister since Trevor Manuel. I underestimated the former Reserve Bank governor. High-handed and contrarian, he has quickly established himself as SA’s most colourful and opinionated finance minister ever.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will soon announce his new cabinet, but it is uncertain whether Mboweni will stay on. And if he does, it might be due to an absence of suitable candidates rather than because “The Governor” (as he insists on still being called) is the best man for the job.
Mboweni has sent out mixed signals about his commitment to the post, on occasion telling audiences that he wouldn’t be around after the election. It is also no secret that he spends as little time as possible at the ministry in Pretoria, preferring to work from his farm in Limpopo.
Then there’s his Trumpian tweeting habit. During the weekend after the general election, he tweeted 14 times about preparing a chicken casserole, complete with pictures of his chickens.
“Life is too hard, sometimes we just have to relax a bit. Cooking ...,” he tweeted, followed by a picture of himself in parliament laughing uproariously. But two days later, when SA’s unemployment rate hit 27.6% after the loss of more than 100,000 jobs in the first quarter, the minister was silent.
His apparent lack of seriousness wouldn’t be an issue if the Treasury was the powerful institution of yesteryear, but it bled talent during the state-capture years. Mboweni has done little to rebuild it. He even pulled out of the 2019 Old Mutual budget speech competition dinner at the last minute, though the prestigious event allows him to vet the country’s top economic students.
Described by the Financial Times after a boozy, eight-hour lunch on his Limpopo farm in April as “by turns intellectual, bombastic and raucously funny”, Mboweni is also uncompromising and unafraid to speak his mind. He has stated repeatedly that SA Airways should be closed, and that pouring more money into Eskom is like “pouring water into a sieve”. This has made him something of a darling in the financial community.
“Tito’s always behaved like that [bombastic], but investment bankers like him because he shoots from the hip, stands up to vested interests and his ego is so big that he won’t let the budget go down on his watch,” says a young, private economist who is hoping Mboweni will stay on.
But a veteran economic-policy expert is disappointed by Mboweni’s lack of commitment:
“You have this opportunity to have an impact and you squander it because everyone else is. It’s the new norm in government,” she says. “The bar is so low.”
The best candidate to replace Mboweni would be Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago, a model of probity and excellence. However, the Bank arguably needs to have a political big hitter at the top to protect it from interference even more than the finance ministry does at this point.
Gauteng finance MEC Barbara Creecy has also been mooted and would be well received, but neither she nor Kganyago has any political clout, whereas Mboweni is a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, a useful attribute given the highly politicised nature of the position of finance minister.
In short, the next finance minister will have to be incorruptible, highly regarded by the financial community and a political heavyweight who can fight in the Treasury’s corner and make a strong case for the market economy in SA’s highly contested policy environment.
On a good day, Mboweni is all these things. So far, he has been a good enough finance minister, but he could be an excellent one if he chose to be.
Given the state of the economy, SA will need everyone in the new cabinet to bring their A game, Mboweni included.
• Bisseker is a Financial Mail assistant editor.
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