Gigaba contradicts his wife
‘Only 1 minister and 1 message’
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has contradicted his wife Norma when defending the controversial statements she made at the weekend. Gigaba, who appeared before the standing committee on finance in parliament yesterday, said it was untrue that his wife influenced his work while minister of home affairs and that she helped with the IT system for the department. This comes after Norma told eNCA, in an interview on Sunday that sparked outrage on social media, that she helped improve IT solutions related to the processing of passport applications during his tenure at home affairs. Gigaba was asked by EFF MP Floyd Shivambu whether his wife had been attending official government meetings with him. But Gigaba said “Mrs Gigabyte”, as his IT specialist wife is known, did not influence his work. “Because you just got married, you’ll learn that not only do people outside suggest to you ‘don’t do this, dress like this, you may want to conduct yourself in a particular way’, my wife does the same,” he said also in reference to Shivambu's wedding two weeks ago.
Gigaba said Norma had referred to helping with passports because “people send her messages, ‘Mrs Gigaba, can you please refer this issue to the minister, I applied for a passport and this, that and the other happened’.”
He stressed that his decisions were based solely on the advice from the department.
In the interview, Norma said “we did the transfer of technology together” and “I was there helping”. But Gigaba said “we are making a meal out of nothing, there is no tender that was brought by the company she works for”.
He also offered Shivambu some marital advice, saying that he would realise that while his new wife, who works in the office of National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete, would offer him ideas, this would not amount to influencing how he played his roles as an MP and an EFF deputy leader .
Gigaba also defended his controversial economics adviser Professor Chris Malikane, whose radical opinions on the economy have ruffled some feathers – among them DA MP David Maynier who said there were mixed messages coming from the Treasury and “you can’t distinguish between messages coming from the finance ministry and ANN7”.
But Gigaba was clear that there was only one minister and only one message.