Zwane tries to turn a public good into a private one
Unlike Ramaphosa and his team at Davos, Zwane fails to inspire confidence at Mining Indaba, writes David Christianson
There can be no starker contrast than that between the seamless performance of "Team SA", led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January on the one hand, and the barely concealed antagonisms that crackled around Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane’s appearance at the Cape Town Mining Indaba the following month. Ramaphosa took a large team of government ministers and corporate barons to Davos. The whole team, resolutely — in most cases; a few kept quiet — backed his assertion that SA was "open for business" and that the headwinds of 2015-16 had actually created a better enabling environment. They repeatedly referred to the continuing corporatist engagement, initiated after President Jacob Zuma’s disastrous nonperformance at the same event in 2016, where potential investors waited in vain for an explanation of the sacking of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister and the three-day tenure of David van Rooyen. SA shone at Davos 2017 beca...
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