Mboweni’s A-team
Many of the top-level team at the Treasury are young, keen and committed and have been hailed for their work by both the president and the finance minister. Nicki Güles got to meet them and found out what makes them tick
They are steering the South African ship through violent waves of a pandemic, trying to keep afloat a leaky vessel weighed down by massive debt and a flailing economy. Meet Mboweni’s millennials, the senior management team at the Treasury, hailed by President Cyril Ramaphosa at a meeting with the South African National Editors’ Forum earlier this month when asked how finance minister Tito Mboweni navigates the course from his mountaintop home in Magoebaskloof. “He’s built a very good, young team in Treasury that is really demonstrating that they have come to grips with these complex matters of finance, from the directorgeneral right through to the deputy directors-general and a number of other officials. They have really become a solid team that is also innovative,” said Ramaphosa of Mboweni and those who put together the budget delivered last month. “A number of people have tended to say that Treasury does not have the gravitas and the standing it used to have. I tell you: interact with these largely young people, women, who represent the demographics of our country. They are really the pride of our nation.” The Sunday Times interviewed nine of the Treasury’s 10 deputy directors-general (DDGs), most of whom are under the age of 45, as well as their boss, director-general Dondo Mogajane, and their political heads about what it is like to be a younger person in a government dominated by older leaders.
Mboweni spoke of the “energetic, versatile and smart” people who “work long hours, have the appetite to dig into the detail, and are connected with their colleagues in other parts of the world”.
“They bring all those advantages together and I am very pleased that they are there. Sometimes I am afraid to expose them too much to the private sector in case they get stolen,” he said.
Packing the PhDs
The youngest DDG is Mampho Modise, 37, who heads the public finance division — a job Mogajane occupied before his promotion.
“I started in public finance three years ago when I was 34. Maybe that’s why I look 50,” she jokes.
“My job is to help the departments spend their money within the confines of the law, and … have greater spending efficiencies. We look at departments who want additional funding, assess the projects and if we support [them] we take the matter forward to cabinet. We are the link between departments, cabinet and parliament to which we report on a quarterly basis on the spending patterns.”
Modise, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pretoria, hails from Vlaklaagte in the former Kwandebele bantustan. Modise’s mother was unemployed and sewed dresses and baked biscuits to survive. That is why for her, working in the government was an easy decision.
“My mother is 63 years old and the fact that every month she gets a government grant, can go to a public clinic, and has running water and electricity, those are the things that allow me to see the purpose of what I’m doing,” she says. “We change lives every single day. We could do better, and we could do more, but at least we are doing something. That’s what is keeping me in the job.”
Modise’s education was funded by the state, up to university level where she was a beneficiary of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
Covid and diminished tax revenues forced the Treasury to cut the department of higher education’s budget by R24.6bn this year, which led the department to cut the NSFAS budget by R6.8bn, fuelling ongoing student protests over financial exclusion.
Mogajane, himself a student activist campaigning for free education in the late 1980s, says it was an excruciating choice. “Poor Mampho and the team find it very difficult because it’s not only NSFAS. They look at the full stream of responsibilities and pressures, whether it is health — we all know we have to make money available for the Covid vaccines — or NSFAS or the R350 grant extension which cost another R6.8bn in an economy that is not functioning effectively,” he says.
Modise, who leads a team of 90 and wears jeans and All Star sneakers to work on Fridays, sometimes has to tell ministers and directors-general that they cannot have what they want. But before then, she tries to make allies of her counterparts in the government, working with them to create spending efficiencies and exploring other possibilities before refusing requests for money.
Interact with these largely young people … they are the pride of our nation
Cyril Ramaphosa President
Bearing the debt burden
Another of Mboweni’s millennials is Tshepiso Moahloli, 39, DDG for asset and liability management, who was permanently appointed in November. Armed with a master’s in economics from Wits University, she joined the Treasury in 2010. Her seat was once occupied by former DGs Lungisa Fuzile and Lesetja Kganyago.
It takes her 15 minutes to explain to this reporter what her job involves: managing the government’s R4trillion debt portfolio and a department of 110 people whose work includes issuing government bonds, managing the Treasury’s bank accounts, and forecasting cash requirements to ensure no payments bounce in the accounts through which between R18bn and R25bn moves every day. She engages with local and foreign investors and international finance institutions such as the World Bank, and deals with ratings agencies whose downgrades make our debt more expensive.
“My other job, which most people don’t envy, is to provide oversight of state-owned companies,” she says. “It’s not an easy job because you don’t have full control. You have to respect entities’ governance processes, their boards, their management … But when there is trouble, those lines become blurred. For example, as a National Treasury employee I get asked about when power stations are going to be completed. I don’t run Eskom.”
Moahloli comes from the village of Maile, North West, where she lived with her grandmother. She