Nene: ill-fated manwho tried

Published Dec 10, 2015

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WHEN Nhlanhla Nene was made Finance Minister in May last year, there was the expected jaundiced response from some commentators. Some even chose to recall his uncomfortable fall in an SABC studio when a chair he had been allocated as deputy minister of finance as a guest on a show, broke.

Yet Nene, with his considerable experience in finance, would go on to reveal his mettle and prove the instincts of former president Kgalema Motlanthe right, the latter having given him the job of deputy minister when the now-forgotten Jabu Moleketi resigned in the wake of Thabo Mbeki’s recall.

There were small acts from Nene, such as retaining his old Nissan Pathfinder instead of buying a new luxury vehicle at our expense when he became the minister of finance, that endeared him to many people. And there were more important ones, such as delivering a frank and unvarnished appeal to Cabinet – and, indeed, all of us – for austerity while delivering his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. That happened against the backdrop of police aggression in the grounds of Parliament against protesting students.

Nene told Parliament that day that quality and integrity cannot be assured by laws or ideological precepts, sanctions or emotional appeals. Instead, he said these derive from dedication, commitment and shared values. It was clear on Wednesday night when the shock news broke that Jacob Zuma had effectively fired Nene, that this may be the dissonance between the president and the populace. To many South Africans, it would feel like shared values may no longer be in place.

If that were not so, we might rather have seen action taken against Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga when thousands of children were compromised in their ability to learn through not having been provided with textbooks. The same could currently be true of beleaguered Communications Minister Faith Muthambi who continues to back disgraced SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

Instead, we have lost a highly competent patriot to the ranks of Cabinet, and, furthering that dissonance, the president won’t even tell us why.

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