NUMSA STATEMENT ON THE APPOINTMENT OF MR LESETJA KGANYAGO AS NEW RESERVE BANK GOVERNOR
7 October 2014
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has consistently called for the nationalization of the Reserve bank, for the abandonment of the neoliberal macro-economic policies which have ruined the manufacturing sectors of this country and led to massive shedding of jobs, and for the abandonment of inflation targeting by the Reserve Bank and its replacement by employment, and all rounded development of the people and economy of South Africa.
All successive Reserve Bank Governors have miserably failed to protect the majority of the people of South Africa, who are the working class. The Bank's instruments for managing the value of the rand have all failed, as witnessed by the abnormal levels of unemployment in South Africa today and the ever-deteriorating value of the rand itself against other currencies.
Numsa notes with great concern the public announcement by President Jacob Zuma regarding the appointment of Mr. Lesetja Kganyago as the new SA Reserve Bank Governor - a person well known for his neoliberal capitalist bent.
Consistently, Mr. Kganyago has been a model neoliberal financial mismanager of note. Indeed, his appointment opens old but unhealed wounds among workers, given Mr. Kganyago's brutal and ruthless pursuit of neoliberal capitalist financial policies when he was Director-General at the National Treasury.