By Bonke Dumisa
So much has already been said and written about the late Cabinet Minister Pravin Gordhan since he passed on last Thursday, September 12, 2024. I have no interest in repeating all of that. Let me look at him from a different focused lens.
One thing I can say about him upfront is that he never betrayed his principles in order to be loved.
Pravin Gordhan or PG as he is known in activist circles, worked with former Cabinet Minister Tito Mboweni for decades, in different capacities, especially when Mboweni was the Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (1999 – 2009) and when Mboweni was the Minister of Finance. Gordhan was also very successful as Commissioner of the South African Revenue Services, SARS, and the Minister of Finance (twice), amongst other cabinet portfolios during these times.
Mboweni described Gordhan as follows:
“Three features of PG that I remember: anti-apartheid activist, non-racist to the core, fond of detail and loyal. His main weaknesses were stubbornness (like me) and difficult to change his mind even when facts demanded (SAA) … Overall a good comrade. Will be missed and remembered for many years. MHSRIP.”
Let us now look at the different features of PG, as described by Mboweni. Pravin Jamnadas Gordhan was Accused Number 6 in the 1990 Operation Vula terrorism trial, where he and eight others including Sathyndranath “Mac” Maharaj and Siphiwe Nyanda were charged for terrorism in contravention of Section 54(1) of Act No 74 of 1982.
The apartheid state charged them of having intent to overthrowing or endangering the state authority of the Republic of South Africa. PG was also charged with alternative charges of unlawful possession of a Makarov pistol, a 156 mini limpet mine, a quantity of ordinary detonators, a quantity of electrical detonators, 57 rounds of 7.62 ammunition, and 128 rounds of 9mm ammunition.
Commenting on PG’s guerilla warfare political armed struggle credentials, as detailed above, one current-day political activist cynically remarked “No toy guns and peacetime commanders here”, directly alluding to one political demagogue who has self-styled himself “Commander in Chief”.
This current day political analyst was specifically referring to a case that is still going on where Julius Malema and Adriaan Snyman are on trial for allegedly discharging a firearm. Malema has publicly said they did not possess a real firearm, and that they fired a toy gun “to excite people”.
Is it not paradoxical that the political demagogue who has consistently galvanised the society against PG is agreeing to using a fake gun, as opposed to PG who was politically charged for the possession of “the real makoya” during the real anti-apartheid armed struggle.
Some of the people who really understand the dynamics of the volatile race relations in KwaZulu-Natal will tell you, in private, the very decisive direct involvement of PG when sensitive political tensions had to be defused behind the scenes without playing to the gallery.
PG was definitely not the type to stand on top of the mountain and shout slogans when such serious political racial tensions had to be quickly and effectively defused. Is it not ironic that the people who seek to portray PG as a “racist” of some sort are actually the people who have sometimes publicly endangered racial relations through their opportunistic reckless statements?
Why do some people hate or dislike PG so much? He made most of his enemies whilst he was the SARS Commissioner. One “learned friend of mine”, that’s how lawyers refer to each other, told me an interesting story that there was word going around in certain “higher class” social circles that people must avoid inviting PG to their parties, purportedly because they said he had a habit of going out of the party and look for the most expensive cars parked there, where he would note down the registration numbers of those cars, and later follow-up to find out who the car owners were; and check their tax compliance status. Very unbelievable as this story may sound, there may be an element of truth in it, given that PG was attributed with being “fond of detail”.
It was under this “fondness for detail” that PG made enemies for himself. Amongst those enemies he made was a young politician who lived large and bought an expensive property in a very expensive Gauteng suburb, in order to demolish that property so that he would build a new house there with an underground bunker.
The outcome of that “fondness for detail” resulted in a tax case where that young politician was, in 2012, charged with fraud, money laundering and racketeering. Unfortunately, after numerous postponements due to repeated delays by the National Prosecution Authority, that particular case was finally dismissed by the Courts in 2015. This deep dislike or even hatred for PG can be directly linked to such cases by all those who were accused of being on the wrong side of the law.
The same can be said of the countless people who were fingered in the Zondo Commission reports. Do you remember how PG was deliberately humiliated by being directed to immediately cancel the official overseas trip he was on, because someone wanted to remove him from office as the then Minister of Finance, in order to make way for “The Weekend Special” Minister of Finance?
The one area where PG did not necessarily cover himself in glory, without necessarily being suspected of any mischievous wrongdoing was his handling of the South African Airways / Takatso Consortium deal. As Mboweni described PG as very stubborn, his over-cautious reluctance to release more details about the then proposed SAA/ Takatso deal unfortunately resulted in many people wrongly accusing him of having some dodgy personal interests on the then proposed deal.
Too bad, there were just too many challenges with that SAA/ Takatso Consortium proposed deal, it finally collapsed. The positive spin though is that SAA was able to get back to business; and is currently doing relatively good and some of us who use it find their service great and better than all of its competitors on the routes that they service.
May Pravin Gordhan’s Soul Rest in Eternal Peace.
* Prof Bonke Dumisa is an independent economic analyst.