A ‘politically neutral’ finance minister cannot address SA’s real problem — broken politics

11 May 2025

While the Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is preparing his Budget 3.0 for later this month, there is already speculation about what will happen afterwards. But suggestions that our coalition government needs a ‘politically neutral’ finance minister may well misdiagnose the problems. Having someone who is not elected in that position for a long period would be bad for our democracy and make them dependent on the president.

Given our current situation and our history, it was inevitable that there would be a conversation on whether an apolitical finance minister might be a better option than having someone from a political party.

Considering that the process of drawing up a Budget is about to be highly political, that there has been vast corruption in government spending in the past, and that politicians of integrity are in short supply (if any indeed do exist), it is entirely rational to make this suggestion.

The history of Derek Keys during the transition to democracy is a good example of how this can work.

In that case, the National Party understood that it did not have the legitimacy to manage the country’s finances. It was also politically impossible to appoint someone from the ANC in an NP Cabinet (the NP’s members would not have accepted this and the negotiations between the parties were still under way).

But both the ANC and the NP agreed on this move, thus giving Keys legitimacy.

This made the actions of both Keys and Chris Liebenberg (who succeeded him) successful.

Temporary measure

But there was another important aspect that could be easily overlooked.

It was clear to everyone that this was a temporary measure and that the ANC would eventually appoint a finance minister from its ranks.

This it did, and Trevor Manuel is widely regarded as a successful and progressive finance minister (but it’s important to remember he was presiding over the long economic boom that resulted from the end of apartheid and the fact that everyone was finally allowed to participate in the economy).

Our situation now is very different.

It would appear the suggestions to have an apolitical person in this position stem from the fact that our current national coalition cannot manage this position properly.

If that is the case, there is no suggestion that this will change. We are likely to have coalition governments for a long time.

It cannot be that we have a finance minister who is not an MP permanently, just because we have a coalition government.

The lack of democratic legitimacy cannot be underestimated.

Independence

While it is true that Pravin Gordhan was not an MP for his first term as finance minister, he still derived legitimacy as a member of the ANC that had overwhelmingly won the previous election.

That would not hold here.

At some point, a finance minister would have to implement reforms and decisions that would be politically controversial. Without their own legitimacy, they would be unable to do this.

Instead, they would have to rely on the political support of the president.

Over time, this would mean that if they want to retain their position, they would become dependent on that person.

As a result, if they were there for any lengthy period, they would no longer be independent. And the converse, that perhaps such a person would not care about the job and thus act as a free agent, would be an even worse prospect.

There are other problems with this suggestion.

It is obvious to any observer of our politics that the position of finance minister is probably the most powerful in the Cabinet after the president (and may often appear to be more powerful than the deputy president, who does not have any power over spending).

This is one of the reasons then president Jacob Zuma removed Nhlanhle Nene in 2015, and was forced into appointing Gordhan back to the post a whole weekend later. That led to all the conflict between him and Gordhan that marked the period leading up to December 2017.

This means that the person would not just have to be acceptable to the parties in the coalition, but also to other roleplayers in our society. In short, they would have to be trusted.

The markets

A crucial constituency here is international markets. It was the bond market that essentially forced Liz Truss to resign as British Prime Minister for being too right-wing.

More recently, these markets were probably the main reason current US President Donald Trump had to “pause” his irrational tariffs.

Any person appointed to this position would have to be acceptable to the markets.

This makes it likely that almost anyone considered for the post would have a background in business, automatically opening the door to parties such as MK and the EFF to claim this person was a representative merely of capital.

In other words, they would claim this was merely business taking over the finances of the nation.

It would also force some of the parties in the coalition, such as the ANC and the DA, to defend this person, perhaps reinforcing that impression among many voters.

Poor political management

But the real reason that it’s probably a poor idea to appoint a non-political person as finance minister is that it misdiagnoses the real problem.

The reason we are in this mess is because of our politics, because our parties and their leaders are not managing the situation correctly.

The ANC allowed Godongwana to propose raising VAT by two percentage points without consulting other coalition partners. The DA then allowed itself to appear as if it had decided to die on the hill of a 0.5% percentage point hike. The person most to blame here is Ramaphosa.

He should have led from the front on this months ago, calling a special meeting of the national coalition partners to agree on a Budget, or at least broad principles for one. Instead, the ANC, under his leadership, carried on as it always had.

Of course, the real problem may be the structural issues that led to Ramaphosa’s failure to lead. In other words, it’s about the internal politics of the ANC. The real issue is that the Budget problems have less to do with the identity of the finance minister (although Godongwana could also have avoided much of this through his own actions) and more to do with our broken politics.

Until that changes, having an apolitical finance minister will change nothing. DM

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South Africa

Temporary measure

Independence

The markets

Poor political management