Pravin Gordhan’s earliest role as an organiser of civil resistance still carries relevance
It was said on good authority this week that Pravin Gordhan died with no regrets about his choices and sacrifices in the fight against corruption.
That fight did not always endear him to party colleagues.
“Some in the ANC hated him with a passion because, until his last breath, PG would not bend,” Mac Maharaj said at his funeral on Thursday morning.
A week after his death — in which the bones of his legacy have been picked clean — it is worth preserving the frustration he held for the impunity afforded to state capture figures.
It reportedly irked him greatly that many of those named or linked to the sale of South Africa still enjoyed plush positions in both party and state.
As it should all of us.
For our democracy to heal from the gashes of its most egregious era of corruption, those who wielded the knife must be indicted, not just blunted. If not, then what were the years and millions spent on the Zondo state capture inquiry for?
President Cyril Ramaphosa, of course, has always had to play realpolitik. He knew that Gordhan was one of the few he could trust implicitly, which is why he persuaded him to stay in the executive a few years after he wished to retire and gave him the fraught portfolio of public enterprises.
Ramaphosa scrapped that department in June when he named his new cabinet. That it again includes people named in the Zondo report reaffirms that he has been unable to escape the political crabs pulling him back into the bucket.
At what point should it read as a betrayal of his pre-election promise to redouble efforts to eradicate state capture? The small fish may have been fried, but to date none of those who were central to the years of corruption have been convicted.
There is an argument to be made that Ramaphosa knew that implementing vital reforms in his final term meant moving more of the work to his presidency, rather than relying on his cabinet, and has done so regardless of the inevitable criticism.
But, once more, the smell of concession is strong. It will continue to linger as long as compromised ANC figures such as Gwede Mantashe are kept onside — even while those within the state privately acknowledge the minister’s cost to the economy and our confidence.
Unless Ramaphosa begins to act decisively, his own political epitaph will read “compromise”