Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE best is yet to come at the inquiry into the rapid depreciation of the rand in 2001, SA Chamber of Business (Sacob) chief executive officer (CEO) Kevin Wakeford said on Tuesday night.
Wakeford, speaking at the Johannesburg Press Club, said the commission so far had been nothing more than an education exercise. “It’s early days for the commission,” Wakeford said.
“The South African public will make sure that the commission finds out what is wrong and then will demand that the system be fixed. Let’s give the commission a chance and let the facts speak for themselves.”
Wakeford said he did not think the commission should be looking for culprits, but rather trying to find out what was wrong with the system.
“Witnesses at the commission said that there were millions of transactions in the South African currency markets and that finding a dubious one was like finding a needle in a haystack. Well then, let’s find that needle,” he said.
The Myburgh Commission – established after Wakeford wrote a letter to President Thabo Mbeki saying the rand’s 37% fall against the dollar in 2001 was suspicious – completed its first two weeks of public hearings last week.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, in his submission to the inquiry, criticised Wakeford for not giving the evidence to the national Treasury to investigate, while South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni has labelled the move as “populist”.
Wakeford said he had handed the information to the president “for the right reasons”.
Speaking in Cape Town earlier on Tuesday, he said he had acted as a messenger and had handed information over to Mbeki without any condition that an inquiry be called.
“In December I was just as confused as most people… I received information and became a messenger and passed it on to the president.
“I never said it (the rand’s slide) was completely attributable to dubious dealing,” Wakeford said.
Regarding the cost of the inquiry, Wakeford said in Johannesburg that R25-million was a small price to pay to discover what was wrong and to put it right.
He said he the perception that he would be the commission’s star witness was wrong.
“People think that I am going to go to the commission with a gun blazing, but that is not the case, I am merely be a messenger. I can guarantee there will be better witnesses than me,” he said.
Wakeford said a depreciating currency led to a series of problems for the country and should not be looked at simplistically.
He also rejected the argument that Zimbabwe and Argentina were largely responsible for the rand’s fall, saying the market had known about problems in neighbouring Zimbabwe for two years.
Mboweni, however, addressing Parliament’s finance portfolio committee later in the day, said the central bank had considered taking legal action against Wakeford to force him to hand over the information.
It was only when the Sacob CEO had made a statement that public officials may have been implicated in “dubious” transactions, that the bank had decided to support the inquiry, he said. – Sapa
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