Chameleons do not make good finance ministers

There is a good chance that President Cyril Ramaphosa will keep Malusi Gigaba on as finance minister. But should he? This week, Gigaba revealed to the world that the governing ANC was about to put the knife into Jacob Zuma when he went on CNN to reveal the deadline the party had set the president and how it would boot him out if he did not meet it. Gigaba looked for all the world like a man in Ramaphosa’s corner as he sat in the CNN studio with its Table Mountain backdrop and spoke the sober language of good governance. I wondered if Zuma watched the performance on CNN and muttered “Et tu, Malusi?” The former head of state was Gigaba’s patron and had entrusted him with three vital cabinet portfolios: home affairs, public enterprises and finance. It must have hurt Zuma to see the 46-year-old minister turn against him.

Gigaba is a master chameleon. A protégé of former president Thabo Mbeki, the popular former president of the ANC Youth League was made deputy home affairs minister under the elder statesman. He acquitted himself well in the home affairs portfolio and, together with another former incumbent, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, can claim the kudos for modernising the department.

When Mbeki was ousted, Gigaba rapidly changed his political stripes and found favour in Zuma’s patronage regime.

His time at public enterprises is particularly pockmarked and has never been fully explained. Gigaba enabled changes to the boards of state-owned companies which laid the foundation for the large-scale looting that led to state capture. He did this under the guise of transformation: there has been little empowerment by state companies, but there has been extraction and capture without economic benefits.

Then, the #Guptaleaks e-mails detected close links between

Gigaba’s confidants and the Guptas. The young minister moves from ministry to ministry with an ever-expanding circle of supporters and flunkies. Two of them, Siyabonga Mahlangu and Thamsanqa Msomi, became Gupta flunkeys, too. Both extended favours and exerted pressure on the civil service to do the bidding of the family.

Did they do so with the support of Gigaba? The minister says a forceful no, and so does his heavily doctored Wikipedia profile.

And there’s another Gupta-linked story that raises eyebrows. The story of Fireblade, the elite private airport at OR Tambo that became an object of tussle between the old oligarchs, the Oppenheimers, and the new ones, the Guptas, has Gigaba right in the middle. He reportedly approved the Oppenheimers’ lease but then withdrew support because Ajay, Atul and Tony wanted it as their toy.

Zuma called Gigaba, who was at a fashion show with wife, Norma, on March 31, when Pravin Gordhan was given his marching orders. “You are becoming the new head of Treasury,” he was told.

Since then, Gigaba has undergone another masterful metamorphosis. He quickly clicked that this powerful portfolio is one of many masters: the technocrats of the Treasury who are so bright you can pull no wool over their eyes, the markets, the ratings agencies and the president.

In no time at all, Gigaba edited his old script in favour of radical economic transformation and against white monopoly capital to talk the soothing language of fiscal probity. It was a performance deserving of a political Oscar, and Gigaba capped it this week when he turned Zuma executioner on CNN.

Ramaphosa was mulling keeping Gigaba on as he chose a new cabinet. Chameleons change stripes so perfectly. He will make the policy changes and the budgets that Ramaphosa requires as he implements the new president’s new deal. He may very well do very well on the job, but Gigaba owes the nation some answers before he sheds another skin.

In no time at all, Gigaba edited his old script in favour of radical economic transformation