THICK END OF THE WEDGE: Freer Treasury access could help Zuma in legal dodge
BACK to square one. President Jacob Zuma blinked on Thursday and after two days of heavy rand-selling in the markets, and a very powerful and very welcome warning of disaster to come from Business Leadership SA, he put out a terse statement saying he has full confidence in Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, but doesn’t have the power to stop the Hawks investigating him.That last bit is nonsense, of course. Zuma could long ago have asked Police Minister Nathi Nhleko to pull the Hawks off Gordhan’s back. And even if that were uncomfortable, he could simply have asked revenue service chief (and his former brother-in-law) Tom Moyane to withdraw his complaint against Gordhan and former SARS colleagues for the creation of an internal intelligence unit when Gordhan had Moyane’s job.It simply beggars belief that the Hawks would order Gordhan to present himself for a warning interview (a precursor to being charged and arrested) at their Tshwane headquarters on Thursday without Zuma knowing. He...
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