“[Pravin Gordhan] He was a highly skilled behind-the-scenes man who avoided the spotlight.” (Getty Images)
Less than a week before he died of cancer on Friday morning, a message of support was delivered on his behalf by former Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Goudhan at the 130th anniversary celebrations of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in Durban.
Gordon, who retired in May, was due to speak at an anniversary ceremony for the organisation he helped resurrect as a young activist as part of the resistance to the apartheid regime.
But by the time the ceremony was to take place, 75-year-old Godhan was too ill to attend or speak online, with his longtime friend and fellow activist Ravi Pillay delivering the message instead.
Gordon called for a “reset” – a return to the values that sustained them during the struggle – to an audience made up largely of veterans of the liberation fight and younger generations of activists.
Rather than focusing entirely on the history of the NIC, Gordhan, as he usually does, used the event to speak out against state takeover, call on civil society to stay away from self-interest and ensure that democratic institutions are “state takeover-proof”.
“We cannot allow the national prosecuting authority, parts of law enforcement and the Public Protector's office to be abused again by those whose only goal is to line their own bank accounts,” Gordhan said. “Democracy cannot survive on its own.”
This was Gordon's final political act in more than half a century since he joined the NIC as a pharmacy student at the University of Durban-Westville in 1971.
Gordon's intelligence, determination and organisational skills quickly elevated him to the leadership of the reconstituted NIC to mobilise the Indian community against apartheid.
By 1974 Gordon was on the executive committee of the NIC and would play a key role in the establishment of student and civic organisations in Durban and the subsequent rent and school boycotts.
During this time, and again in the 1980s, he was detained and banned multiple times for his activist work, and was fired from his job as an assistant pharmacist at King Edward Hospital for his political activities.
A highly skilled behind-the-scenes figure who shunned the spotlight, Godhan was a central figure in a network of student, civic, religious and cultural organisations that came together under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983.
On the surface, Gordon led the boycott of the tricameral parliament in 1984 and was detained under the Internal Security Act, but he was also drawn into the ANC's underground fold.
Gordon was forced to go on the run in 1986 and remained in hiding until 1990, when he was arrested again for his participation in Operation Vula, an operation by the ANC's military wing to bring weapons into the country.
He was awarded compensation the following year, became part of the negotiating team of the Congress for Democratic South Africa (Codesa), and co-chaired the Provisional Executive Council overseeing preparations for the country's first democratic elections.
Gordon served as a Member of Parliament in the first Parliament and was elected Speaker, a position he held until he left Parliament in 1998.
Mr Gordon was appointed Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) in 1999 and served with distinction in that role for 10 years.
He is widely credited with modernizing South Africa's revenue system – electronic tax return filing was introduced during his tenure – and strengthening the country's ability to boost finances by cracking down on traditional tax evasion sectors.
Gordhan was appointed finance minister in Jacob Zuma's first government in 2009, marking the end of Trevor Manuel's long tenure and seen as an attempt by the new president to pander to the left that had helped him come to power.
At his first press conference as Treasury Secretary, Gordon was asked, predictably, whether he remained loyal to his earlier Communist tendencies.
“Are you wearing red socks?” is how the Times reporter phrased the question.
The Minister replied that at that point he was no longer a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and was driven by reality, not ideology.
He said he joined the South African Communist Party in the 1970s and explored Marxist methodology as a means to realise humanitarian values and social justice, adding that the Treasury's mission was to “work to the benefit of the entire nation”.
Gordon became Chancellor at the end of the global financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of US subprime mortgages.
In his first budget, he prioritised infrastructure spending and relaxed exchange controls to stimulate investment in South Africa's economy, which was in its first recession in 17 years.
Economic growth has yet to recover to pre-2008 levels, and Gordon has been forced to strike a balance between stimulus and fiscal sustainability during his two terms in office.
Mr Gordon regularly urged colleagues to “tighten the purse strings” and “cut waste”, but was unfairly accused of austerity by those on the left, losing his battles to rein in public pay spending and cut support for mismanaged state-owned enterprises.
In 2010, faced with the reality of power outages and faltering lenders, he was forced to extend R350 billion in loan guarantees to Eskom to secure funding for the construction of Kusile and Medupi.
The man who as SARS Commissioner had personally reminded industry leaders to pay their taxes, continued to lecture them on the national interest as minister.
He appointed Lungisa Huzir as his financial director general in 2011. Their partnership was marked by mutual respect and loyalty, and over time resistance to a deal that was initially designed to benefit the Guptas grew.
When President Zuma first took office he told Minister Gordhan he wanted to award the nuclear power plant project to Rosatom, and Gordhan warned that there was a risk of a repeat of the arms dealing scandal if proper procurement procedures were not followed.
He was moved to the role of coordinating governance when Zuma appointed former deputy president Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister in 2014. Eighteen months later, Nene was sacked for not backing down on the nuclear deal with Russia and replaced by Des van Rooyen, an ill-fated representative of the Gupta family.
Over the next four days, the rand fell 5.4%, prompting bankers to hold emergency talks with ANC leaders including President Cyril Ramaphosa and Treasurer Zweli Mkhize, who persuaded President Zuma to reinstate Gordon as finance minister.
During his second tenure, the threshold for dismissal was met frequently.
The Treasury has been a target for the architects of the state takeover, a natural extension of their campaign to dictate spending and dismantle the controls put in place at Sars under Mr Gordon's watch.
Tom Moyane was overseeing the dismantling of the Revenue Department with the tacit support of President Zuma. Gordon ordered the commissioner to halt a disastrous restructuring plan devised in collaboration with Bain & Company, but soon found himself under fire from the Hawks.
Just before his 2016 budget speech, they sent Trump a list of 27 questions about allegations that he had illegally set up a covert intelligence unit within the Revenue Service.
He replied that he would respond in due time, and accused the police and “those instructing the police” of intimidation and economic neglect. In October that year, Gordhan was charged with fraud for approving the early retirement and re-employment of SARS Deputy Commissioner Ivan Pillay.
The charges were dropped, but in April 2017 President Zuma sacked Gordhan in an infamous late-night cabinet reshuffle, marking the beginning of the end of his power.
The SACP rejected the cabinet reshuffle and Mkhize, Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe all publicly expressed concern about the way in which ministers were sacked.
Gordon returned to parliament and, driven by an unwavering commitment to the public cause and unconcealed anger, took an active role in the parliamentary inquiry into corruption at Eskom.
He used inside information to grill executives about the origins of disastrous coal contracts awarded to the Guptas, telling the then public enterprises minister, Lynne Brown, that he found it hard to believe they denied collusion.
“Connect the dots” became his catchphrase when encouraging colleagues to spot and stop corruption.
President Ramaphosa appointed Gordon as minister of public enterprises in his first cabinet in 2018, entrusting him with the heavy burden of turning around state-owned companies such as Eskom, Transnet, SAA and Denel, which had long been under state control.
Ironically, and inevitably, it was his least successful year in cabinet.
“There are people among us, and perhaps outside, who do not want these state-owned enterprises to take the right path, because they want to explore the possibility of a state takeover version two,” he warned in 2022.
Opponents of Ramaphosa's reform efforts have continued to pursue him using the “rogue squad” conspiracy theory, even though the former judge who headed the SARS commission of inquiry, Robert Nugent, concluded in 2018 that there was no evidence he had done anything wrong.
Former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane ignored the findings and submitted a report recommending that Gorhan be reprimanded for misleading parliament. In 2022, the Constitutional Court refused leave to appeal the review of the report, exonerated Gorhan and ordered him to pay legal costs.
In his final months as minister, Gordon denied allegations that he improperly influenced the sale of SAA to the Takatso consortium. Under pressure from parliament, he refused to reveal details of the deal with shareholders, insisting it be kept confidential, along with the shortlist of bidders.
He stuck to this position even after announcing the cancellation of the deal.If this debate, endlessly stoked by Economic Freedom Fighters, demonstrates anything, it is Gordon's commitment to the idea that the state should maintain a stake in public enterprises and thus a role in shaping the economy.
Critics called this political interference, correctly pointing out that Transnet and Eskom remain troubled and the unbundling of Eskom has periodically stalled.After Gordon, Ramaphosa closed the division that had been set up in 1999 with the aim of restructuring the public enterprise into a linchpin of the economy.Gordon staunchly supported that goal, but the project was irretrievably failing by the time he was asked to rescue it.