In the not especially distant future
His apparent lack of overly obvious and cold-blooded ambition will surely see him propelled towards that place. He has been relatively scandal-free. He is young and energetic and was unafraid to contradict the ANC Youth League – an organisation he once led – when it came to nationalisation. Admittedly, this earned him insults, but I suspect it's something he knew would come his way – and nothing he couldn't handle.
Butting heads with the current pride of young lions will undoubtedly set him at loggerheads with the very obviously ambitious Fikile Mbalula. Also a former leader of the youth league, Mbalula has the support of the league, and, come the ANC's elective conference in Mangaung this December, is likely to challenge Gwede Mantashe for the position of secretary general.
Supplanting Gwede would set him up very nicely for a shot at becoming deputy president, and then it's just a hop, skip and a jump to the presidency. Is that triple jump what he's practising for as South Africa's sports minister?
Gigaba, on the other hand, seems more concerned with getting his hands dirty as the minister of public enterprises. He has even managed to calm the egos of South Africa's parastatals in his tenure thus far.
Mbalula and Gigaba may well be pitted against one another by people in the movement with opposing agendas.
Something would set Gigaba apart from Mbalula though, and give the enterprising captain something of an edge.
In ten years time he will be merely 52 – admittedly the exact same age as Mbalula, but if he remains in government throughout that period, he would have been in government for almost 20 years – five years longer than Mbalula – meaning he would have just enough of an edge to be one of the most experienced people in the government by then.
Not only that, he would be a veteran of the ANC's national executive committee. He would have served his time without having tried to skip any steps in order to ascend to the highest position of the ANC.
It would be a travesty if factionalism in the ANC costs him a position in government after Mangaung in December. Provided that Zuma is not, as young Julius so eloquently prophesied during a BBC interview this week, removed as president of the ANC. Gigaba has, of course, been cited as a Zuma supporter.
But then being a Zuma supporter doesn't mean that he is anti-Kgalema Motlanthe. That is an important distinction to make. Motlanthe does not seem like the petty type either, or one who would discard such talent merely because he was viewed to be in one camp or another. Motlanthe knows that there is one ANC and talent needs to be given a chance.
South Africa is a country with a young population, and in the next 10 years deserves to have a young president. In fact, when one looks at United States and Britain, they both have young leaders.
When one navigates through Twitter one stumbles on hashtags proclaiming, #Gigabaforpresident every now and then. Obviously these people don't mean he should be one now, they can see a future in which they are as comfortable with him as a leader as he is on Twitter. One of the few Cabinet ministers who is.
When he speaks about his portfolio, you get the sense that he knows exactly what is going in the complicated and myriad state enterprises he oversees. Asked about how the government is developing the next generation of skilled professionals, he rattles off figures showing how many student engineers Eskom has, compared with some other state owned entity he runs.
He is also not held in the thrall of his own importance. Most ministers will sit down at a function in their table and let everyone come to him. Not him. He leaves his comfort zone and seeks seeks others out in theirs – being comfortable around ordinary people makes them comfortable around him.
Major scandals and the fickle hand of fortune aside, he is set to be a man who will lead us in the future. And I don't see a problem with that. Do you?