At President Jacob Zuma’s press conference to announce the replacement of Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni with Gill Marcus, the threads appeared more revealing of a potential attitude-shift at the SARB than the tealeaves.
On the dais, Mboweni (the Posh Spice of the South African economy?) in his sharp, presumably bespoke suit and silk tie, cut a figure in distinct contrast to his successor (Scary Spice?) in a shapeless kaftan.
Delving between the lines of statements from market watchers, business and the trade unions, though, it appears Marcus’s “Spring” range is more popular than Mboweni’s “Fall” collection — especially with the left.
If Congress of South African Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi is to be believed, frumpy is the new black.
Marcus, in her loose, airy kaftans is more consultative and open to engagement, general thinking goes, and it is within those billowing loose folds that Vavi hopes government will find the “space to implement” its mandate. Which hopefully extends beyond doling out free T-shirts at imbizos and sod-turnings.
This, in sharp contrast to Mboweni’s penchant for keeping himself to himself in snugly fitted suits that left no space for alternative voices and chafed, especially on the left. The outgoing governor’s tailoring — with many suits handmade by Paul Reso — constrained the inflation around his mid-riff as tightly as his inflation-targeting constrained economic growth, his detractors suggest.
Following the announcement, Rand Merchant Bank’s chief economist, Rudolf Gouws, told media outlets that Marcus’s style and substance made it easier for her to explain and get unpopular economic policy decisions accepted. This, not merely because she wouldn’t have a Cohiba clenched firmly between her teeth while nattering on.
Analysts also suggest that while Marcus will engage more often with journalists, unions, business and the rest of the real world between monetary policy committee meetings, she remains cut from a similar cloth to the often-distant Mboweni on policy, and no seismic shifts are predicted in this regard.
While sometimes appearing as formidable as the battleship Bismarck, the 59-year-old Marcus is, in fact, considered more genial than her irascible and haughty predecessor, whose attitude to photographers often resembled Naomi Campbell aiming cellphones at housekeepers who may-or-may-not have nicked a pair of jeans scheduled for an Oprah appearance.
Marcus, the former Absa Bank chairperson, is “dovish” compared to Mboweni’s preening peacock is the general consensus.
And with the rand gaining against the dollar after Sunday’s announcement, the markets appeared comforted by Marcus’s matriarchal presence, as were the unions — a seduction technique the metrosexual Mboweni never managed to master, despite — judging by Mail & Guardian file pictures from the early 1990s — a latter-day discovery of exfoliating scrubs and facials.