Gordhan will be remembered for ‘aloofness’- analyst
Pravin Gordhan’s successor as public enterprises minister will need to understand that openness is at the centre of democracy, according to political analyst Goodenough Mashigo.
Mashigo was commenting on Gordhan’s legacy as a minister.
The Department of Public Enterprises on Friday confirmed that Gordhan is set to retire from politics after the elections in May.
READ: Gordhan 'to step down' from active politics after polls
Gordhan has been in government since 2009 - having served in various state departments, including Finance, and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
Mashigo says the next minister cannot continue to keep a veil of secrecy over deals such as the Takatso Consortium’s bid to buy a 51% stake in SAA.
"The next minister really needs to be careful of the kind of associations that they have because, at the end of the day, ministers of public enterprises need to understand that the companies they are running are not theirs. They are running them on behalf of the public, and the government just happens to be a shareholder by proxy on behalf of South Africans.”
Mashigo says Gordhan will always be remembered as a minister with a sense of aloofness.
"The latest thing about him as the minister of public enterprises is that I think he brought a lot of darkness into public enterprises. Suddenly nobody really knew what was happening in the department.
"Suddenly, they had portfolio committee meetings where the media was not allowed with nobody understanding what exactly is the minister hiding.
"I think there are three parts to him. The UDF times, where it was risky for him to be involved and had an option of serving the apartheid government, but he chose not to.
"And the time from Mandela to Jacob Zuma, but beyond Jacob Zuma, he has been a very prominent person, prominent in a way that up until as the minister of public enterprises there's a lot of undesirable things that one can attribute to his leadership.”
ALSO READ:
