Major butting of heads to come

If ever a pair of diametrically opposed opinions showed how deep the growing divide within the ruling party is, it is Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s Absa report and former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni’s response. Apart from treading the politically populist line that Absa repay R1.125 billion to the Reserve Bank, Mkhwebane also advocated that parliament constitutionally amend the bank’s powers.

Mboweni cautioned that the central banks were very important and sensitive institutions and that it would be unwise to meddle with their independence “at the slightest political provocation”.

The repayment demand and Reserve Bank powers centre on the bailout of Bankorp – absorbed into the Absa Group in 1992 – between 1985 and 1995. Absa refutes any lingering debt and the bank and its main shareholder, Barclays Africa, have decided to approach the high court to have the public protector’s report reviewed and set aside. They charge that Mkhwebane’s report was based on “clearly irrational and unreasonable legal conclusions” and that numerous misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies in it are “clearly irrational and unreasonable legal conclusions”.

It starts to shape up as one of the most head-on confrontations between the camp headed by the embattled President Jacob Zuma and his armoured laager of Cabinet cronies and the factions aligned to Zuma’s Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa.

It also signals a headbutting of major proportions between the ruling elite’s mantra of white monopoly capitalism and a more restrained, Westernised financial system balanced by the free market, epitomised by Mboweni during his tenure as bank governor, Ramaphosa, the financial institutions and industry.

Whether this will resonate with the electorate will only be made clear in 2019, but with some 66% of our population under 35, a youthquake could arguably be in the offing.