JOHN DLUDLU: A tribute to a fine human being

Tito Mboweni!!! (Tito Mboweni!!!)

Tito Mboweni!!! (sha!!! Sha!!!)

Tito Mboweni!!! (Tito Mboweni!!!)

Tito Mboweni!!! (sha!!! Sha!!!)

Tito Mboweni!!! (Tito Mboweni!!!)

Tito Mboweni!!! (sha!!! Sha!!!)

Tito Mboweni, SA’s eighth governor of the SA Reserve Bank, was a serious man in a country that has grown unserious.

Since his demise, much has been written about his culinary skills — especially his mild addiction to garlic and tinned fish — his funny Twitter posts (at night) and his strange dress sense towards the end of his colourful, yet consequential, public life.

The lyrics above, the chorus of a popular song released in 2017 by hip hop artist Cassper Nyovest, have inadvertently fed into the narrative of a funny old man in the past week. The song, also a metaphor for conspicuous consumption and a colloquial play on bank notes bearing his signature, became a soundtrack for his eventful life.

This later image of him conceals the enormous contribution he made to SA’s democracy and economy. Having sacrificed his youth to fight apartheid, he returned to a free SA to build it into a respectable African country.

As well as shepherding the formulation of SA’s progressive labour relations, as SA’s first black African governor of the Reserve Bank he contributed to shaping economic policies. As governor, he opened the Bank to the rest of SA and zealously defended its mandate and independence.

He was an awkward intellectual snob who loved food, tailor-made clothes, wines, whisky and Cuban cigars. As part of making the Bank accessible to many, he would invite editors to the governor’s house, wine and dine them, and expected them to be dressed in ties and suits. Those who defied his dress code risked being frozen out or would be made to wear his ties for the duration of the dinner.  

Towards the end of his life he witnessed spirited attacks on the labour laws he crafted and attempts to weaken the Bank’s independence and nationalise it. Interestingly, his own party, the ANC, has been among those leading the charge to change the Bank’s mandate into a cure-all brief.

Amendments to modernise SA’s labour laws are facing litigation and some have been stuck for years in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac), an institution created by Nelson Mandela’s administration in which Mboweni served as its first labour minister. The statutory institution has been rendered irrelevant over time by parallel structures.

Mboweni loved his country. Much of what he did was driven by a desire to serve and came from best intentions. Most recently, he had been championing the creation of a state bank and a sovereign fund. He paused this campaign during his reluctant return to government as finance minister after the sacking of Nhlanhla Nene in 2018.

On the day of his appointment, he seemed genuinely shocked that Nene had been fired for misleading a journalist about his interactions with the Gupta family. Unlike many in the ANC, Nene, now a businessman, hasn’t been charged with anything.

Although Mboweni lived a full life, he had disappointments. First, he was gutted by how corrupt the ANC became. Second, he was humiliated when he left the Bank under Jacob Zuma. His sin was his proximity to Thabo Mbeki, who had just been ousted from the helm of the ANC as well as the republic. This was despite the fact that the economy was growing rapidly.

Third, he would have loved to be posted to London as SA’s high commissioner. He often joked about this. In reality, he desired it, but was too proud to ask.  

And last, he is known to have wondered why local commercial banks never appointed him to their boards. Only the New Development Bank and Goldman Sachs appointed him as director and adviser, respectively.

• Dludlu is the CEO of the Small Business Institute.