Pravin Gordhan is lucky the poor do not have rating agencies
It was disingenuous to expect a budget aimed at radical transformation, writes Aubrey Matshiqi
The budget speech was the background music to the political noise that preceded its tabling to Parliament by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. The speech was delivered in a context of perceived or real tensions between President Jacob Zuma and "his" finance minister. Inside the finance minister’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), the supporters of Zuma are ramping up their demands for the president to fire Gordhan, and the decision of the ANC in the North West to deploy former Eskom CE Brian Molefe to Parliament is therefore not uninteresting. Clearly, suggestions that Molefe is not going to spend his time in the National Assembly warming ANC benches is not an implausible proposition. Also plausible is the suspicion that Zuma’s hidden hand is behind Molefe’s redeployment. In political terms, the move seems intended to unsettle the finance minister by planting in his mind the vision of Molefe standing outside his office, ready to point Treasury in the direction of the intere...
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