So, by all accounts Pravin Gordhan is gone. President Jacob Zuma told it like that to the SA Communist Party (SACP) politburo on Monday night as the finance minister was flying home, rudely (deliberately) recalled from an investors road show in London. Someone on social media was calling the fact that Zuma had said as much to the SACP (and the rest of the ANC top six) foolish but it wasn’t. He must have known it would leak. In fact, I suspect he was relying on it leaking. If there’s one lesson Zuma learnt from December 2015 it was not to take the markets by surprise with bad news. The result of a slow reshuffle process, almost positively interrupted by the death and funeral of Ahmed Kathrada, will be a much softer landing for the rand than when Zuma casually fired Nhlanhla Nene on December 9, 2015. The fact that someone was smart enough to leak the forthcoming reshuffle does not make the reshuffle smart. Appointing Brian Molefe as the country’s finance minister is a terrible idea. N...

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