He is not even walking into the sunset…
Pravin Gordhan: endgame?
THERE was a charming insularity about suburban Group Areas and far-flung communities that never failed to baffle me. My first experience of Asherville, aka Chinatown/ Springtown, as I knew it in my childhood, was on a visit to the home of a classmate, Thangavellu, in Crocus Road.
Enjoying the hospitality of his family was the hallmark of sheltered communities. Years later, in the conviviality of a local ‘pub’ with fellow classmates, we were accosted by an elderly white man who was thrilled to meet Indians.
“An Indian saved my life in North Africa during the War,” he informed us loudly. We were some of the first Indians he had met after leaving his Scottish home in Banffshire.
But that was decades ago, when the world was a larger place and when sport, politics and the wider affairs of the nation had connected Asherville and the larger Indian community to the global sporting arena, political fora and other battlegrounds.
Last weekend some of the locals gathered at the David Landau Community Centre, coincidentally in Crocus Road, to express their solidarity with persecuted Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
Conversations centred on memorable Asherville antiapartheid activists like the late Morgan Naidoo, Samba Ramsamy, DK Singh, Ramlall Ramesar, Swami Gounden, Abdul Haq Randaree and other notables of a bygone era, and their roles in the campaigns for a just society.
It is no longer ‘correct’ to make broad generalisations based on ethnic or national stereotypes. However, one Asherville resident’s understanding of the behaviour of Indians can be contrasted with other societies, where fierce individualism is the norm, and where over-bearing leadership pays limited dividends.
The ‘collective leadership’ mantra is conveniently trotted out every so often.
“People have underestimated the relationship between the Indian community and wider South Africa. They have to think again,” the senior resident reminded me.
Maybe the adverse publicity swirling around Gordhan – who, incidentally, has ties with Asherville – is a move that could be regarded as contempt, and perhaps contrition may yet compel the community to sharpen its political impulses.
For the past nine months the spotlight on Gordhan has been dominated by a concern, if not rage, until last week untroubled by the speculation and comment that he has been the subject of allegations of fraud rather than what would pass as a misdemeanour relating to his approving an early retirement pay-out of R1 million to a colleague.
Regardless of the issues, let alone the sideshow (the original investigation, which cost over R25 mllion, was on a “rogue unit” during Gordhan’s tenure as Sars commissioner), it took an indefatigable and selfless fighter for justice to lay bare the fault lines of political conduct.
Gordhan, whose integrity, sense of social justice and democratic credentials have never been in doubt, remains in the popular imagination one of South Africa’s most admired politicians. He was never one to break the rules of the game, and people revelled in the realisation that he was admired and respected in his party, the ANC, and across the floor.
The decision to pick Gordhan as successor to outgoing Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in 2009 was a clear affirmation of President Jacob Zuma’s commitment to ensure policy continuity at the Treasury.
That Gordhan was chosen for the top job confirmed he was a person who helped formulate crucial changes in the monetary framework during his tenure at revenue services. He targeted economic growth and curbing inflation as the primary remit of the Treasury. This reflected the Zuma administration’s focus on making growth and employment central to his economic agenda.
In 2014 Gordhan was shafted ahead of this year’s municipal polls.
The stay of his successor, Nhlanhla Nene, at the treasury was short-lived.
Sacking
Zuma sacked Nene, and the shorthand caricature of the appointment of Des van Rooyen as his successor a year later was that the country’s purse strings were in safe hands – only for Zuma to rescind that decision four days later in favour of Gordhan.
This, after much huffing and puffing by the political parties, their proprietors and just about everybody.
Picture the scene: Gordhan presenting his midterm budget next Wednesday.
Now imagine the uproar if he is stopped from doing so because he is facing a R1 million fraud charge. Well, fantasise no longer. Gordhan is not walking into the sunset. Neither is it his endgame.
However, one is reminded of what former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan did, completely out of character, in 1962: at one stroke he sacked seven members of his cabinet.
The casualties of that ‘Night of the Long Knives’ included the Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), the Lord Chancellor, the education minister, the defence ministers and the ministers responsible for Scotland and Wales.
It was a political massacre, the likes of which had never been witnessed in Westminster.
“I feel my neck all the time”, Rab Butler, who escaped the massacre, confided to journalist Harold Evans, “to see if it is still there.”
Like the weather, politics is unpredictable. Zuma culled seven unwanted bodies in a reshuffle of his cabinet in 2010 – demonstrating in one fell swoop that cabinet members serve on his terms.