MKMVA CONDEMNS MINISTER MBOWENI’ S RECKLESS, UNACCOUNTABLE AND ARROGANT BEHAVIOR
Date: Sunday, 4 November 2018
The Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) is dismayed by some of the recent public behavior and pronouncements made by the newly appointed Minister of Finance, Minister Tito Mboweni. As an old hand, who had previously served for long stints in public office - among other high profile positions as Minister of Labour and Governor of the South African Reserve Bank - Minister Mboweni knows that every word that he utters in the public domain carries the weight of the high office he now again occupies, and has to be weighed very carefully.
This is even more true for the position of Finance Minister, and returning to public service from the belly of the capitalist beast, so to speak, having been International Advisor of Goldman Sachs International, Chairperson of the Board of AngloGold Ashanti and a board member of various monopoly companies, Minister Mboneni knows very well how fickle and volatile the so-called free-market stock exchange driven economic environment is. For Minister Mboweni to go around from one high profile public platform to the other, with apparent self-righteous arrogance abandon, spouting his personal opinions while knowing very well that these do not reflect the official policy positions and Resolutions of the ANC, as the ruling party, is truly unconscionable.
All of this is made worse by the fact that as a long-standing member of the ANC Mr. Mboweni knows that he is bound by the Resolutions of the 54th National Conference of the ANC, and that National Conferences are the highest decision making organizational structures of the ANC. Furthermore, he understands the principle of democratic centralism, and the discipline that is derived from it for every member of the ANC. The Constitution of the ANC demands of every single member of the ANC, without exception, to adhere to such discipline.
In addition Minister Mboweni is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, which brings with it further responsibilities of leadership on the basis of the trust that had been placed in him by the delegates, who at the ANC National Conference voted for him informed by the mandate that they had been given by the branches of the ANC. Minister Mboweni knows very well that he is not Minister of Finance because he is such a ‘worthy’ or ‘special’ individual, but as a deployee of the ANC who must carry out ANC policy, and how such policy found expression in the Resolutions of 54th National Conference of the ANC. To do anything else - especially knowingly and willfully as must be
the case for a person who knows the ANC as well as Minister Mboweni does - is indolent and grossly indisciplined. Such conduct may very well, and actually should, lead to disciplinary steps being taken against him.
MKMVA, being the official Association that represents the veterans of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which as the people’s liberation army had always been the most militant and disciplined formation of our Liberation Movement, adheres to the discipline of democratic centralism and internal organizational debate. As such we will in this media statement not go beyond the issues and conduct of Minister Mboweni that he so recklessly already thrusted into the public domain. Together with these issues we are also deeply concerned about the extraordinary arrogant public posture that Minister Mboweni projected during, and after, his delivery of the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement in the National Assembly and subsequently at the SA Investment Conference in New York.
Minister Mboweni ran rough-shod over the ANC position with regards to e-tolls, applying the so-called ‘user must pay principle’ in an extraordinary rigid, un-nuanced and unsophisticated manner, placing his own party the ANC in a most unenviable position (especially the ANC in Gauteng), that directly led to the debacle of the Gauteng ANC being forced into a corner of Minister Mboweni’s making, and having had to march in protest to e-tolls against its very own ANC government. All of this Minister Mboweni did while we are only months away from National and Provincial elections. The image of an out of control demolition wrecking ball comes to mind!
As disciplined soldiers of MKMVA, who understand ANC and government lines of authority and protocol, we also watched with aghast amazement how Minister Mboweni, apparently puffed up by his overblown self-importance, during the Medium Term Policy Statement, behaved like some kind of ‘Prime Minister’ rather than keeping to his job description as Minister of Finance. He encroached on the mandates of various of his ministerial colleagues and their departments, to the point of even announcing that he had spoken to the military command of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to intervene in the water polution crisis in the Vaal River.
The Minister’s concern about the urgent need to address the Vaal River water pollution crisis was commendable, but surely he should have gone about this differently. To abuse such urgency to undercut protocol, and literally usurp the position of the President as Commander in Chief of the SANDF, is very dangerous indeed. For Minister Mboweni to present as a reason why he felt entitled to do so, because he is a ceremonial ‘honorary colonel’, would have been laughable if it was not so horribly arrogant and disrespectful, as well as setting such a bad precedent.
Minister Mboweni has a strange way of showing his gratitude to President Ramaphosa for the trust that he has placed in him to put him at the helm of Treasury during these difficult economic times. Surely President Ramaphosa hoped for a pair of steady disciplined hands, not this kind of ego-driven mercurial turbulence.
As MK, and now MKMVA, we have always had as one of our most important tasks to be the first line of defence to protect the President of the ANC, and especially the dignity and authority of the Office of the President of the ANC. As we have stated in our media statement immediately after President Ramaphosa was elected as President of the ANC, MKMVA will do the same with regards to him as we have done for all of his illustrious predecessors. Our concern about the conduct and posturing of Minister Mboweni should be understood in this context.
MKMVA will therefore be amiss not to also address Minister Mboweni’s continuing public (and live televised) grandstanding at the SA Investment Conference in New York, where he called South African Airways (SAA) “worthless junk”, and recklessly blabbered on that it should be closed down. In effect, as a result of this statement, the Minister probably chased away any potential investment in SAA. One cannot help but wonder what his intentions were to deliberately create such a disastrous situation, and whose hidden agendas he serves in doing so? Surely it was not done out of ignorance, or in error, because the former International Advisor of Goldman Sachs is for too astute for that. COSATU in their angry statement about Minister Mboweni’s conduct may very well be correct that he is, “looking for easy applause and nods of approval from his neo-liberal overlords”.
All of this the Minister does while knowing very well that the ANC never resolved at our 54th National Conference to shut down State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s). He furthermore does so knowing very well that he is placing the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of SAA workers and their families at risk. Apparently the so-called ‘comradeship’ that comrade Mboweni now adheres to, after his sojourn into the hallowed well-padded halls of monopoly capital (where, as he could not resist to tell us during the press conference after the Medium Term Policy Statement, he was “earning very well thank you!”), no longer cares about the plight of workers. Together with his vastly improved financial well-being, his loyalties have evidently also changed. This is quiet a political and moral summersault for a former Minister of Labour, but only proves how correct Karl Marx was when he wrote that most people’s consciousness is determined by their material conditions.
In similar vein Minister Mboweni contemptuously dissed the Resolution of the 54th National Conference of the ANC that the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) should be nationalized, and with apex arrogance described those who call for such nationalization as “uninformed”! With that single sentence the Minister insulted the majority of delegates at the ANC’s 54th National Conference who supported the nationalization of the SARB.
From his intellectually arrogant and superior elitist perch he seemingly looks down at all of us in the ANC who support this Resolution as ‘uninformed’. Again he also serves President Ramaphosa poorly, because our President can certainly not be seen to be associated with such a stance, and the pressure has now truly multiplied that he must to move expeditiously and proceed with the nationalization of the SARB, also in order to distance himself from such arrogant insults to the members of his own party, which also include members of his own National Executive (Cabinet).
Evidently Minister Mboweni cannot be allowed to continue to behave like the proverbial bull in a china shop. MKMVA therefore whole-heartedly agrees with the timeous call from COSATU that President Ramaphosa, and the ANC NEC, must reign in this deployed cadre in the Finance Ministry. Minister Mboweni’s unaccountable delinquent behavior must come to an immediate end before he causes more - and possibly irreversible - damage to the President, the ANC, and especially to the people of our country.
Statement issued by Carl Niehaus, MKMVA NEC Member, and National Spokesperson, 4 November 2018
