(Bloomberg) — Pravin Gordhan, who held three cabinet positions in South Africa and won praise for standing up to Jacob Zuma during his scandal-plagued presidency, has died. He was 75.
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Gordhan died early Friday morning in hospital from cancer, his family said in an emailed statement.
Gordhan was a veteran anti-apartheid activist and a leading member of the African National Congress. He made his name in government by leading a reform of the National Revenue Service years before serving under Zuma.
Gordhan was recruited to the post in 1999 by then Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and served as Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service for ten years. He transformed the service into a world-class organisation, overhauling its systems and recruiting a new team of highly skilled staff. Government revenues tripled during his tenure as an additional 1.5 million people were drawn into the tax net.
Minister of Finance
Zuma was appointed president in 2009 — weeks after prosecutors dropped charges against him for accepting bribes from arms dealers — and picked Gordhan to replace Manuel as finance minister. Gordhan steered the economy through the aftermath of the global financial crisis, with the economy growing an average of about 1.8 percent a year during the five years he held the post.
After winning a second term in 2014, Zuma assigned the finance portfolio to Nhlanhla Nene and appointed Gordhan as minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs. Linked to a series of scandals, Zuma sacked Nene in 2015 and replaced him with a little-known legislator, David van Rooyen.
The move triggered a sell-off in the rand and government bonds, and business and ruling party leaders pressured Zuma to reconsider. Four days later, he announced that Gordhan and Van Rooyen would swap portfolios.
But Zuma repeatedly undermined Gordhan’s authority, describing Van Rooyen as the most qualified finance minister he had ever appointed and rejecting Gordhan’s request to sack tax chief Tom Moyane for insubordination. Gordhan defied Zuma’s attempts to open the spending taps and fund a nuclear expansion programme, presenting a national budget that proposed spending cuts and higher taxes.
Fraud charges
In 2016, prosecutors said Gordhan would face two fraud charges for illegally approving a subordinate’s early retirement, resulting in 1.1 million rand ($61,000) in wasteful spending. Civil rights groups, the heads of some of South Africa’s largest companies and dozens of ANC leaders rallied behind Gordhan and the case was dropped due to a lack of evidence.
Gordhan said he had been the victim of “persecution and political unrest” caused by “rent seekers” looking to tap the public purse.
In March 2017, Gordhan flew to London to promote South Africa as an investment destination, and upon arrival received a message from Zuma’s office instructing him to return home. He was dismissed shortly afterwards, as part of a major cabinet reshuffle that saw Zuma appoint loyalists to key posts.
Zuma resigned as leader of the ANC in December 2017, and the ANC forced him to step down as president two months later to stem a loss of electoral support. A judicial commission of inquiry concluded that state institutions were systematically plundered during Zuma’s nearly nine-year tenure with his tacit approval.
Power outage
Cyril Ramaphosa, who succeeded Zuma, appointed Gordhan as his minister of public enterprises and tasked him with turning around mismanaged, cash-strapped state-owned enterprises. While their boards and management teams were reorganized, they continued to underperform, leaving the country exposed to rolling power outages and logistical problems that paralyzed the economy.
Pravin Jamnadas Gordhan was born on April 12, 1949, in the eastern port city of Durban, the son of traders who had emigrated to South Africa from India in the 1920s.
He became involved in the struggle against white minority rule while studying pharmacy and was arrested three times for his political activism, enduring torture by police. He played a key role in negotiating a peaceful end to apartheid and became a lawmaker for the party after the country’s first multiracial elections in 1994.
Gordhan announced his retirement before the May 2024 elections and has since kept a low profile. He has a daughter, Anisha, with his wife, Vanitha.
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