MUDDLED NARRATIVES
Zuma will be smiling as Absa lifeboat story gains impetus
Jacob Zuma will relish developments as Pravin Gordhan gets painted into a corner with the evil banks, writes Carol Paton
Banking executives can’t be sleeping well in this uncomfortable political environment. Regulators at the Reserve Bank can’t be happy either. Banks don’t like the public spotlight. They skirt controversy under the guise of client confidentiality, seldom answer questions and they don’t get into public spats. But with the leaking of the public protector’s draft report, the narrative of a grand conspiracy to hold on to white monopoly capitalist wealth, involving banking executives, the Bank, the Treasury and the apartheid order, is gaining momentum. Where is it all going? At first, the campaign looked harmless. Project Spiderweb — the so-called intelligence dossier that drew fabricated links between former and top Treasury officials including Trevor Manuel and Maria Ramos, and the old Afrikaner establishment, particularly Johann Rupert — emerged in August 2015 to much public ridicule. But after the big four banks terminated their relationships with the Gupta family and associated compan...
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