Does President Cyril Ramaphosa still have confidence in “lame duck” finance minister, Tito Mboweni?
7 November 2018
President Cyril Ramaphosa “smacked down” his new Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, yesterday in Parliament.
The new finance minister’s big mistake was to express heretical views on how to save zombie state-owned airline, South African Airways.
The effect of the “smack down” was to cast the finance minister as a likable old man, who says what he thinks, but who is on the fringes of power, and who has very little, or no, influence on economic policy.
The new finance minister appears to have been banished to an investor conference abroad this week and will not be present to debate the revised fiscal framework for 2018/19 today in Parliament.