Revelations that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) will charge finance minister Pravin Gordhan for "fraud" over a piffling R1.1m "early retirement" deal for a staff member in 2009 suggests to all the world that President Jacob Zuma has no idea how frail the economy is. Or, more distressingly, he couldn’t care less.All along Zuma has stuck to the script that the NPA is an "independent entity" under lawyer Shaun Abrahams over which he has no control.Well, that’s how it should be. Only nobody believes that’s how it really is — especially after Abrahams’ contortions to overturn the April constitutional court ruling that effectively ordered that Zuma face 783 counts of corruption.Gordhan was charged 15 days before he was set to give his medium-term budget, and days after returning from New York, where he reassured US investors (combined wealth: US$2trillion) that rumours of his arrest were simply "political mischief".In all, 28 of SA’s CEOs went to New York with Gordhan to show th...
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