Ramaphosa told mourners: ‘We will not let Pravin down’
The ANC owed it to Pravin Gordhan’s legacy to put its house in order so that it can rid the country of state capture and corruption and deliver on the promise of democracy, former minister Mac Maharaj said at his funeral on Thursday.
It was a cold fact, Maharaj told mourners, that those who committed state capture had not been brought to justice.
“We are still grappling with bringing to book those involved in state capture and with the challenge of rooting out corruption in both public and private sectors,” he said.
“In order to succeed in removing this huge obstacle to creating a better life for all, imbued with the spirit that we are one people building one nation, we need therefore, as Pravin would have it, that the ANC puts its house in order and renders itself fit for purpose. “
“That state institutions are capacitated, that the media continue their search light and that civil society flourishes and continues to enforce accountability and participatory democracy.”
Borrowing from Gordhan’s strategy to revive mass resistance to apartheid, Maharaj added: “So organise, conscientise, mobilise. Make democracy deliver.”
He said Gordhan and his trusted colleagues at the treasury, former deputy minister Mcebisi Jonas and director general Lungisa Fuzile, as well as good officials at the South African Revenue Service, had saved the country from collapse by resisting state capture.
“Without them our beloved country could have become a banana republic government.”
The call to honour Gordhan’s legacy by reflecting on how to right the state battered by graft was echoed by others who eulogised him, including President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The most fitting tribute we can pay Pravin is to reflect on our own actions. To consider what we can and should each do to serve our people better and our country better,” Ramaphosa said.
“To reflect on what it means to be an activist, for he was the quintessential activist. To consider if we are prepared to weather the great storms that so often confront acts of courage and integrity. These are the issues on which we must indeed all reflect as we bid farewell to this great son of our country.
“It is in times of difficulty that moral courage is valued most,” he said, adding that Gordhan possessed it in abundance. “There was never any doubt where Pravin Gordhan stood.”
Ramaphosa was visibly emotional as he thanked Gordhan’s family for warning him that the end was near, and allowing him to spend a few hours with him last week. He said he thought Gordhan had waited for him.
“In a sense I think he waited for me to come and see him before he departed.
“He was my comrade, he was also a colleague and he was a great friend,” he added, stressing that in each capacity he was much-loved.
He said there should be no doubt that the government was committed to rebuilding the country as a free, just and equal democracy.
“Pravin Gordhan’s spear has fallen and it is now up to us to pick it up and take our country forward … What Pravin dedicated his life to, is what we will continue doing so that we do not let him down.”
In his tribute, Jonas said Gordhan “was a brave heart and had no time for cowards”.
His resolute resistance to state capture and the original principles of the struggle meant that Gordhan increasingly found himself isolated within the movement that was his lifelong political home, he recalled.
“He became the outcast in the inside. Not only in principles and in actions but he was among those few in the movement who still believed firmly in the non-racial tradition of the movement in the face of what I call a growing, narrow Africanist populism.”
Yet when Ramaphosa offered him the public enterprises portfolio and the task of rescuing the same entities crippled by the corruption that he had resisted, he did not hesitate, Jonas said.
“Many of those who were previously chanting our names to call out state capture were now either silent or critical of how the capture networks were being undone in state companies,” he said.
“So anyone else would not have taken the poisoned chalice and PG did. And he did it very consciously. He understood that you cannot leave the project of monopolisation to monopolies themselves … so he jumped into the ring.”
He said even on his deathbed, Gordhan continued to think about the future and was convinced that the come for a new mass-based movement for social cohesion and commitment to building a better country.
“And if you think about it, that is so fundamental as a vision to help provide greater legitimacy and a stronger social base for the government of national unity.”
Jonas warned that state institutions remained fragile and said one could not talk of renewal on the one hand and regurgitate “old politics” on the other.
“You are unlikely to achieve a reset. The country is crying out loud for new ideas. We require new thinking.”
Former trade and industry minister Ebrahim Patel paid tribute to Gordhan’s legacy as finance minister, noting that it included finding the money to provide antiretroviral treatment on public health. It meant, Patel said, that hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise have succumbed to Aids survived.
Likewise, he added, Gordhan did not see the fight against state capture as an abstract concept, but an imperative struggle to safeguard money destined for the poor in the form of basic services and grants.
Patel, like Maharaj, said the most fitting tribute to his former colleague would be to intensify that struggle.
Former chief justice Raymond Zondo thanked Gordhan for his assistance to the commission of inquiry into state capture, and recalled the hounding and humiliation he suffered in his final year as finance minister in the Zuma administration.
Gordhan knew that it was done to push him to resign and knowingly resisted, Zondo said.
“He was harassed for doing nothing but his job … He understood that if he resigned he would facilitate the appointment of another minister who would not resist state capture.”
He recalled that before Zuma finally fired Gordhan in 2017, he was offered an opportunity to resign with dignity but he refused to take it.
Zondo said Gordhan was the definition of a public servant dedicated to the cause.
“It is just my wish that we should not end with singing his praises today in the way in which we are, which is well deserved but that at a practical level, when we wake up tomorrow we should go about our business, not as business as usual.
“There should be something that we decide upon to help fight corruption and state capture, that we know that when Pravin Gordhan passed on this is one of the things we decided to do as a country to make sure we deal with corruption and state capture effectively.”
Gordhan’s eldest daughter Anisha dismissed criticism of his term as minister of public enterprises as a failure as “factually incorrect” and said his decisions on SAA and other parastatals were consistently informed by his concern for staff and their families.
The smear campaigns he endured for refusing to relinquish the fight against corruption saw former friends in the struggle and the state turn away from Gordhan, she said.
“All of this ultimately led to many comrades and friends distancing themselves from my father and our family. Despite this, he remained unshaken and more determined than ever,” she said.
“The fence-sitters that did not want to take a stand now stand on platforms and loudly sing his praises but the courage to connect the dots and stand for change came too late. He repeatedly said our souls are not for sale and our country is not for sale.
“My father’s integrity was never compromised,” she said.