Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, says the economic turmoil experienced when Nhlanhla Nene was fired as Minister of Finance in 2015 could have been avoided if former president Jacob Zuma had done more consultation.
Nene was replaced by Des Van Rooyen, a change which saw a sharp decline in the rand’s value against the US dollar.
He says it was obvious that Zuma’s move to remove Nene had detrimental effects on how investors viewed the country’s economic policies.
“Clearly, the turmoil that we saw on that Thursday and Friday 10th and 11th would worry both myself and others who would appreciate what financial turmoil meant. This concern, I expressed to Miss Kaunda to whom I suggested that a team consisting of the Presidency, the Reserve Bank, Treasury and the private sector even over the weekend if need be – find ways of communicating with investors on the decision of the President, attempting in some way to calm the situation down,” says Gordhan.
Gordhan is currently giving evidence at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, which is underway in Johannesburg.
Watch the full hearing below:
