By Lumka Oliphant and Sapa
Tito Mboweni, Governor of the Reserve Bank, usually shies away from the limelight - except when he makes important announcements about the economy.
But lately he has really been making controversial statements - and he's irritating all sorts of people.
At a breakfast in Johannesburg last week, reported in the Financial Mail, Mboweni said: "I have sought to recruit many competent black people, and no sooner have we trained them than they leave. I get so upset! I am stopping this recruitment of black people. I am okay with my Afrikaners. They stay and do the work."
Nolitha Fakude, President of the Black Management Forum (BMF), said the statement by the governor was regrettable, but as the BMF they continued to engage Mboweni as one of their stakeholders.
"We have had meetings with him but the statements play against a lot of stereotypes and makes other people happy that black people cannot keep jobs."
She said they were aware that the Reserve Bank was doing a lot of training of black people but it was unfortunate that the governor had voiced his frustration in that manner.
Zizi Kodwa, spokesperson for the ANC Youth League, said the statement was "unfortunate".
"There is nothing wrong with people progressing, but there must be fundamental reasons for black people to move," said Kodwa.
Patrick Craven of Cosatu labelled the comments "strange" but said Cosatu fully supported employment equity as a way to redress the levels of discrimination in the past.
"We would not condone any attempt to slow down the process of addressing these inequalities," said Craven.
Businessman and political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki (the brother of the president) said: "The governor is a casualty of BEE..
He said this was what happened with affirmative action: "It creates an artificial scarcity so the few people qualified in that scarcity command a massive salary premium.
"Take the number of black chartered accountants - they are less than one thousand and if companies are told that their chief financial officers need to be black, companies will be competing for these black accountants and that is why I say the poor governor is a casualty of affirmative action."
Mboweni does not deny that he made the statement, but said it needed to be understood in the context in which he made it.
He said he was speaking at an Investment Solutions breakfast and was asked casually by Cyril Ramaphosa what issues bothered him.
"I first mentioned the cash-in-transit heists because it's something that happens all the time and secondly, as we try so hard to implement affirmative action, we are faced with one major obstacle - that black people leave."
Mboweni said that he had said he would continue to recruit black people because that was a historical imperative.