OBITUARY – Pravin Gordhan’s last warning: Democracy will not survive on its own

“[Pravin Gordhan] was a highly skilled backroom operator who shied away from the spotlight” (Getty Images)

Less than a week before his death from cancer on Friday morning, a message of support from former public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan was delivered on his behalf to the 130th anniversary commemoration of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in Durban.

Gordhan, who retired in May, had been scheduled to address the commemoration of an organisation which, as a young activist, he helped to revive as part of the resistance to the apartheid regime.

But, by the time the event was held, Gordhan, 75, was too sick to attend — or even address the commemoration virtually — and instead his message was delivered by longtime friend and fellow activist Ravi Pillay.

Gordhan made a call to the audience — most of them veterans of the fight for liberation and a younger generation of activists — for a “reset”, a return to the values which had sustained them during the struggle.

Rather than focusing entirely on the history of the NIC, Gordhan — typically — used the event to rally against state capture, to call on civil society to move away from self-interest and to ensure that the institutions of democracy “are made state capture proof”.

“We cannot again have a National Prosecuting Authority, certain arms of law enforcement and the public protector’s office recaptured for abuse by those whose only intent is to fill their own bank accounts,” Gordhan said. “Democracy will not survive on its own.”

It was to be Gordhan’s final political act of more than half a century of activism, which began when he joined the NIC in 1971 as a pharmacy student at the University of Durban-Westville.

Gordhan’s intellect, determination and organisational ability were to see him move quickly into the leadership of the NIC, which had been revived to mobilise the Indian community against apartheid.

By 1974 Gordhan was serving on the NIC’s executive council and was to play a key role in the setting up of student and civic structures in Durban — and in the rent and school boycotts which were to follow.

He was to be detained and banned several times for his activism during this period — and again in the 1980s — and was fired as an assistant pharmacist at the King Edward Hospital over his political activism.

A highly skilled backroom operator who shied away from the spotlight, Gordhan was at the centre of the network of student, civic, religious and cultural organisations that were to coalesce under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983.

Gordhan was also drawn into the ANC underground structures, while above ground leading the campaign to boycott the tricameral parliament in 1984 and being detained in terms of the Internal Security Act.

Gordhan was forced to go on the run in 1986 and remained underground until 1990, when he was again arrested for his participation in Operation Vula, a mission by the ANC’s military wing to infiltrate weapons into the country.

He was granted indemnity the next year and became part of the negotiation team at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) and was to become co-chairperson of the transitional executive council which oversaw the preparation for the first democratic elections.

Gordhan served as an MP during the first parliament and was elected as chair of chairs, an influential position he held until he left the National Assembly in 1998.

Gordhan was appointed as commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (Sars) in 1999, a role in which he excelled and which he held for a decade.

He is widely credited with the modernisation of South Africa’s revenue regime — e-filing was introduced under his tenure — and in upping its ability to add to the fiscus by cracking down on sectors which had traditionally evaded tax.

Gordhan was named finance minister in Jacob Zuma’s first cabinet in 2009. It marked the end of Trevor Manuel’s long tenure and was seen as an attempt by the new president to oblige the left who had helped him to power.

In one of his first press briefings as treasury chief, Gordhan was predictably asked whether he remained true to his early communist leanings.

“Are you wearing red socks?” is how the correspondent for The Times phrased the question.

The minister replied that he was at that point no longer a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and was driven by reality and not ideology.

He said he aligned himself with the SACP in the 1970s and explored Marxist methodology as a set of humane values and a way of achieving greater social justice. The treasury’s mission, he added, would be to “do our damnedest for the best interests of all our people”.

Gordhan became finance minister during the tail-end of the global financial crisis triggered by the United States subprime mortgage meltdown.

In his maiden budget, he prioritised infrastructure spending and eased exchange controls in an effort to stimulate investment in the South African economy which had entered its first recession in 17 years.

Growth has yet to recover to pre-2008 levels, and throughout his two terms in the portfolio, Gordhan was compelled to walk the line between stimulus and fiscal sustainability.

His routine exhortations to his colleagues to “tighten our belts” and “cut the fat” would see the left accuse him, unjustly, of austerity. Gordhan lost the battle to contain the public wage bill and to cut support for mismanaged state-owned entities.

In 2010, faced with the reality of load-shedding and rattled lenders, he was forced to extend loan guarantees of R350 billion to Eskom to allow it to secure funding for the construction of Kusile and Medupi.

The man who would, as Sars commissioner, personally remind captains of industry to pay their taxes, continued as minister to lecture them about the national interest.

In 2011, he appointed Lungisa Fuzile as director general of finance. Their partnership was marked by mutual respect and loyalty and, increasingly over time, resistance to contracts designed in the first instance to benefit the Gupta family.

Zuma had told Gordhan early in his tenure that he wanted a nuclear power plant project to be awarded to Rosatom, drawing a warning from the minister that not following proper procurement processes would amount to risking a repeat of the arms deal scandal.

He was moved to the cooperative governance portfolio in 2014, when Zuma appointed his former deputy Nhlanhla Nene finance minister. Eighteen months later, Nene was fired for refusing to relent on the nuclear deal with Russia and replaced by Des van Rooyen, a hapless proxy for the Gupta family.

In the four days that followed, the rand fell by 5.4% and bankers held crisis talks with ANC heavyweights, among them Cyril Ramaphosa and treasurer general Zweli Mkhize, who prevailed on Zuma to bring Gordhan back as finance minister.

His second stint frequently met the criteria for constructive dismissal.

The treasury had become a target for the architects of state capture, the natural progression of their campaign to dictate spending and to dismantle the controls put in place at Sars on Gordhan’s watch.

Tom Moyane was overseeing the undoing of the revenue service, with the tacit support of Zuma. Gordhan ordered the commissioner to halt a disastrous restructuring plan devised with Bain & Co and soon found himself harassed by the Hawks.

Just before his 2016 budget speech, they sent him a list of 27 questions relating to the allegations that he had unlawfully set up a covert intelligence unit at the revenue service.

He wrote back that he would respond in due course, and accused the police “and those who instructed them” of intimidation and disregard for the economy. In October that year, Gordhan was charged with fraud for approving the early retirement and re-employment of deputy Sars commissioner Ivan Pillay.

The charges were withdrawn but in April 2017, Zuma fired Gordhan in an infamous midnight cabinet reshuffle that would mark the beginning of the end of his grip on power.

The SACP rejected the reshuffle and Mkhize, Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe publicly expressed reservations about the manner in which competent ministers were removed.

Gordhan returned to the backbenches and played an active role in a parliamentary inquiry into corruption at Eskom, driven by a lasting commitment to the public cause and barely concealed anger.

He used his inside knowledge to grill board members about the genesis of ruinous coal contracts awarded to the Guptas and told then public enterprises minister Lynne Brown her denial of complicity was not plausible.

“Join the dots,” became a refrain as he urged colleagues to see and stem the corruption.

When Ramaphosa named Gordhan minister of public enterprises in his first cabinet in 2018, he handed him the burden of righting Eskom, Transnet, SAA, Denel and other parastatals after years of state capture.

Ironically and inevitably, it would be his least successful years in cabinet.

“There are people among us, and perhaps outside as well, who perhaps don’t want these SOEs to find themselves on the right track, because they would like to explore the possibility of state capture version two,” he warned in 2022.

The opponents of Ramaphosa’s renewal drive had continued to use the “rogue unit” conspiracy to hound the minister though retired judge Robert Nugent, who headed up a commission of inquiry into Sars, in 2018 concluded there was no evidence he had acted unlawfully.

Former public protector Busisiwe Mkwebane ignored his findings and delivered a report recommending that Gorhan be disciplined for misleading parliament. In 2022, the constitutional court vindicated the minister when it denied her leave to appeal the overturning of the report on review and ordered her to pay his legal costs.

Gordhan’s last months in cabinet saw him refuting allegations that he improperly influenced the sale of SAA to the Takatso consortium. Pressed by parliament, he refused to disclose the details of the shareholder deal, insisting that it should be treated as confidential along with the shortlist of bidders.

He camped on this position after announcing the cancellation of the deal. If the controversy, endlessly hyped by the Economic Freedom Fighters, confirmed anything, it was Gordhan’s attachment to the notion that the state should, as shareholder, retain an engaged role in public enterprises and by extension in shaping the economy.
His critics called it political meddling and correctly observed that Transnet and Eskom remained as troubled as ever and the unbundling of the latter had routinely stalled. After Gordhan, Ramaphosa shut the department founded in 1999 with the aim of restructuring public companies to become cornerstones of the economy. Gordhan stubbornly subscribed to that aspiration but the project had failed irredeemably by the time he was asked to salvage it.