Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. (David Harrison/M&G)
Stability, stability, stability. That’s been the characteristic of South Africa’s finance ministry ever since the ANC came into power almost 30 years ago. It’s that stability that dragged us out of the dire fiscal position the apartheid regime had left to the new democracy to sort and into a surplus position by the time the world went into a global recession 2008-09, after an 18-year clean bill of health.
The stability is not of ministers in the most powerful ministry in the country; they have come and gone, especially over the past decade and some.
After serving one of the longest terms as a finance minister, Trevor Manuel’s seat was taken up by a fair number of other people. Some good and others not so good and some we’d rather forget ever had a turn at the wheel, namely “Mr Weekend Special” for his brief jaunt at the end of 2015 and he of “we gonna be alright” fame in Malusi Gigaba.
Despite the upheaval in the ministry that then president Jacob Zuma stirred in his desperate latter years in office, one thing that we could rely on was the strength of the men and women in the treasury. Even in their bad decisions — such as not recapitalising Eskom when they should have — one thing you couldn’t fault the department on is the strength of its human resources. Since 1996, the country’s finances have been overseen by director generals such as Maria Ramos, Lesetja Kganyago and Lungisa Fuzile.
This is a solid bunch of technocrats, who no doubt made some good and bad decisions, but we had — or rather let me single myself out — had the greatest confidence in their decision-making ability. Under them, teams were built with more than enough talent that gave one a sense that succession wouldn’t be a weakness of this department. Kganyago after all had worked under Ramos, and Fuzile under Kganyago.
But when Fuzile left the treasury in May 2017 after 20 years, I’m sure exhausted from the many battles against some more colourful characters that came with the Zuma administration, there was a feeling that something had broken. Battered by their long-running battles with a fiscally irresponsible and corrupt Zuma administration, the treasury had its fair share of senior and well regarded technocrats leaving the building — a hollowing out of state capacity.
Fuzile’s replacement in Dondo Mogajane may have also been a lifer and well regarded in the department, but carried none of the heft of his predecessors — at least to everyone outside of the hallways of the treasury.
Mogajane would serve one five-year term as director general, leaving his post in June last year. It is the most senior position in government because it controls the purse strings of the many departments of a constrained state that hasn’t been in the strongest of fiscal positions for many a year. Whether you choose to call it austerity or not, the fact is the spending taps are closely monitored by investors locally and globally and not to mention ratings agencies that still have South Africa rated as “junk”.
This is the biggest job in the state because it requires balancing the books and ensuring that you don’t squeeze the little life left in the economy. It’s a fine balancing act, when you have Eskom on the financial precipice and important infrastructure deteriorating by the day.
It’s a post that almost a year later remains unfilled.
No matter how well you regard Godongwana as the finance minister, he is only as good as the director general, effectively the chief executive of the department. The 28-year veteran of the treasury in Ismail Momoniat has served as acting director general since Mogajane’s resignation. Taking on the role permanently would make sense except for the fact that he has reached the state’s retirement age of 65.
We have a very real problem. It would perhaps explain the treasury having to withdraw the exemption granted to Eskom to allow it not to disclose irregular and wasteful expenditures in its financial reports. If there were merits to the initial decision, we weren’t warmed to the idea by the department and so there was an outcry.
A smarter treasury would have been better prepared.