DA wants to see Gigaba given the boot
DA LEADER Mmusi Maimane yesterday accused Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba of being part of a delinquent syndicate – which made him unfit and unsuitable to head the nation’s Treasury and fiscus.
He was addressing supporters, who had gathered outside the National Treasury in Pretoria. “We as the official opposition party call for Mr Malusi Gigaba to announce (his) resignation, effective immediately,” he said.
Maimane and the DA supporters had gathered outside the Treasury for his party’s “capture of the critical state institution” protest. They handed Treasury a memorandum calling for Gigaba’s resignation.
Maimane said it was time for the nation to take back its power from a government and do away with “cronies”.
He said that mounting evidence showed Gigaba was compromised. Gigaba was involved in appointing individuals who had been shown to be closely linked to the Gupta family, such as Brian Molefe, Ben Ngubane and Nazia Carrim, to the boards of Eskom, Denel, Prasa and Transnet, the DA leader added.
“He allowed Gupta-owned companies to control StateOwned Enterprises and secure a myriad lucrative deals, ensuring the Guptas and (President Jacob) Zuma become rich,” he said.
Maimane said Gigaba, as minister of home affairs from 2014 to 2017, rolled out the red carpet for the Guptas to easily gain citizenship, and during his three months as finance minister the economy had gone into meltdown.
“We have entered a recession after negative growth. We have been downgraded to “junk status” and the unemployment rate reached a record 14-year high of 27.7%,” he said.
Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga said attracting investment had proven difficult with the current policy uncertainty.
“We are trying to attract investors into Tshwane but are finding it very difficult with so much uncertainty.” Msimanga added that he was trying to make sure that the people of Tshwane got jobs.
He said the discourse gripping the governing ANC on whether South Africa was under the spell of “white monopoly capital” or “monopoly capital” was a sideshow.
“Make up your minds, we need to move forward,” he said.