Minister’s views on privatisation not those of state, says Mabuza
DEPUTY President David Mabuza launched a blistering attack on Finance Minister Tito Mboweni in Parliament yesterday, saying he did not take his views seriously on the privatisation of state-owned entities (SOEs).
Mabuza, who was answering questions in the National Assembly, said Mboweni’s views on the privatisation of state-owned entities were his personal ones and not those of the government. He said he did not take Mboweni seriously when he spoke out on the matter on social media.
Mboweni has said that non-performing state-owned entities, including SAA, should be privatised.
Mabuza said President Cyril Ramaphosa had spoken out against the privatisation of SOEs.
Ramaphosa even said Eskom would not be privatised during the unbundling process.
The deputy president said he did not want to be drawn on the views of Mboweni on privatisation because this was not official government policy.
“I don’t think that’s the way we should approach this debate, whether the SOEs are to be privatised. I don’t take the minister of finance seriously when he makes his comments, those are his views.
“We’ll take the minister seriously when he articulates the government position,” said Mabuza.
“I am not going to entertain a tweet by the minister, that is not a government position,” he said.
It is the first time that a senior government leader has publicly clashed with a Cabinet minister in the last few months.
In the past few years, former finance minister Pravin Gordhan had publicly clashed with the board of state arms manufacturer, Denel, over the VR Laser deal.
Gordhan had refused to approve the deal, and this led to an open fight with the previous board of Denel.
In another set of questions in the House yesterday, Mabuza warned against land grabs in the land reform programme. He said the government would not support any land invasions, and that law enforcement agencies must take action against them.
“As MPs, let us uphold the Constitution. Let us ensure the land reform process happens within the Constitution,” said Mabuza. “I am happy with the constitutional review process because without that, there will be anarchy in the country.”
However, he said Eskom was being fixed as there was a technical review committee that had been set up to review the performance of the power utility. Mabuza said part of the problem at Eskom was the fact that there were many old stations, which were more than 37 years old, that had not been maintained.
Load-shedding has been attributed to a lack of maintenance.
Eskom was sitting on a huge debt and the government injected more than R23 billion a year to keep it afloat.