Pravin Gordhan will be vindicated

South Africa has the title of most unequal society in the world, but Pravin Gordhan’s death has shown another unenviable title that should be added is “the most politically polarised society in the world”.

The former finance minister’s friends and family rallied together to heap praises on a towering figure in South African politics over the past couple of decades, but toxic trolls on social media have been having a field day celebrating his death.

His detractors aren’t only faceless keyboard warriors. Some, like the EFF, have issued public statements saying they will not mourn him because he betrayed the poor and his leadership was destructive.

When Cuban leader Fidel Castro died in 2016, those who didn’t share his political views and leadership style led the chorus labelling him a tyrant and a dictator.

But that did not change the fact that he was a revolutionary and liberator to millions of Cubans and many nations around the world. Castro’s often-repeated refrain was “history will absolve me”.

Pravin Gordhan was not Fidel Castro but he played a gigantic role in fighting apartheid and ensuring that the democratic path that the people of South Africa chose to travel was on a sound financial footing. Literally.

Of Gordhan’s seven and a half decades on this earth, the likes of the EFF chose the last decade of his life to define his whole legacy.

Nowhere in their unnecessary pronouncement do they refer to his real legacy – building a South African Revenue Service (Sars) that was once the envy of even First World tax collection agencies.

Not only did he modernise Sars, but he put structures in place that ensured that South Africa’s young democracy was funded.

During Thabo Mbeki’s tenure it was Gordhan who ensured that record-breaking tax revenues were collected to fund the government’s extended public works programme that turned the government into an employer.

Today, Gordhan’s detractors want the whole world to believe that a man who knew nothing but service to the people of SA hated the poor.

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Gordhan was leading boycotts at the University of Durban-Westville before most of those criticising his legacy were even born.

Having qualified as a pharmacist in 1973 he could have easily avoided a life of detentions and torture and settled into the comfortable life of a more-than-average Joe, even enjoying some of the few benefits that his Indian heritage would have allowed him under apartheid.

And he paid dearly for his life choices. He was even mocked by some who were supposed to be his comrades and who wanted to make him the face of all that’s wrong between Africans and Indians in KwaZulu-Natal and the country.

What infuriated his detractors is that even when humiliated at the height of state capture, recalled back into the country via a text message and then fired on the basis of a bogus one-page intelligence report, he never cowered.

He implored the country to connect the dots and see who was causing the real destruction to democracy.

Maybe he responded a little too arrogantly for their liking. But arrogance is not a crime. Gordhan was no angel but he wasn’t the demagogue they’re making him out to be.

He did not stand by while there was looting. He chose to side with the truth because, like Fidel Castro, he was convinced of the righteousness of his stance.

History will absolve Gordhan.

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