The National Treasury will soon have a new director-general (DG) as the era of civil servants with deep roots in the struggle comes to an end.
There appears to be a tradition of choosing people with experience in the asset and liability unit of the Treasury: past director-general Lungisa Fuzile was the first in that unit.
This may well be more coincidence than trajectory as there are several talented people who came through the budget office, including Michael Sachs and Kuben Naidoo, who could easily have become DGs in the past. They were considered among the candidates when then-finance minister Malusi Gigaba chose Dondo Mogajane as DG in 2017.
Treasury has always been a heavily contested instrument, with politicians and market players pulling it in different directions.
The Zuma years were particularly rough on officials at the department. They were accused of sabotaging South Africa and even had a roadshow cancelled when then-finance minister Pravin Gordhan and Fuzile were called back from a trip in London.
They were in meetings when the call came and had to leave supporting officials behind as they caught the first flight back home.
Before that, officials experienced the drama of the “weekend special”, when an unknown man walked in and set out his vision as finance minister.
Slouching in a couch, surrounded by advisers no-one had seen before, he said: “I’m here to demystify the National Treasury.”
It later came out in the “Gupta e-mail leak cache” that within four days, one of the advisers sent an e-mail to the Guptas, saying “we are inside”, presumably within reach of the safe.
There were other shenanigans, when Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, were fired during a midnight reshuffle.
There are many untold accounts about their experience of the Zuma years.
With Gordhan and Jonas out, Fuzile left the civil service, with clear indignation at his treatment by Zuma.
Sachs and other senior civil servants, such as deputy directors-general Andrew Donaldson and Monale Ratsoma, followed suit.
There was still a strong body of committed civil servants under the stewardship of Mogajane, who saw themselves as holding the line in the battle against state capture.
They ran investigations into Eskom and Transnet corruption and blocked some of the Gupta thieving in the mining-banking complex. Naidoo and colleagues at the Reserve Bank were instrumental in blocking the potential movement of captured money through instruments such as the Bank of Baroda.
The way officials at Treasury saw their role in warding off the Zupta capture was spellbinding and effective.
Treasury became an unattractive employer when it was left bereft of the kind of political cover it enjoyed during the Mbeki years
However, Treasury became an unattractive employer when it was left bereft of the kind of political cover it enjoyed during the Mbeki years.
Trevor Manuel was a powerful finance minister who had political cover from his boss, then-president Thabo Mbeki. That created a conducive environment for the civil servants under Manuel to operate well. Those days are long gone.
As the government looks to appoint a new director-general at Treasury, the candidates will wonder about their vulnerability to political attacks and the kind of cover finance minister Enoch Godongwana will provide.
Godongwana is a skillful political operator and should be able to ward off cabinet-level pressure on his department.
However, the political economy is at a stage where Treasury as a whole will come under inevitable pressure. The logistics crisis means the fiscus will miss out on tax revenue, and elections mean a populist and welfarist manifesto funded through the fiscus.
Treasury is between a rock and a hard place.
Ismail Momoniat has been acting DG for a year and, as he approaches retirement, will not be interested in the role.
His exit from the highest stage represents the end of an era, that of civil servants with deep experience of the country’s politics. His experience as a freedom fighter, and then a technocrat, allowed him to confidently eyeball ministers as peers at the most difficult of times.
How Godongwana and his cabinet colleagues choose a DG is just a precursor to another difficult decision, when Lesetja Kganyago’s term at the helm of the Reserve Bank expires next year. Godongwana and his ANC colleagues may or may not be there after the elections.
We live in interesting times as our public service evolves.
• Mkokeli is lead partner at public affairs consultancy Mkokeli Advisory
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