Ramaphosa announces Tito Mboweni as new finance minister

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Tito Mboweni as the new finance minister on Tuesday.

The president confirmed former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene’s resignation.

“Mr Nene submitted a letter of resignation to me this morning in which he requested that I remove him as finance minister of South Africa,” he said.

According to the president, Nene felt recent revelations that he had met with the Guptas several times while deputy minister of finance despite earlier denying having done so would “detract from the important task of serving the people of South Africa.”

He continued to say that he feels it reflects well on Nene that he chose to resign “even though he has not been implicated in any act of wrongdoing himself.”

Mboweni, a former ANC National Executive Committee member, was minister of labour in then-president Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet. In August 1999 he became the first black governor of the SA Reserve Bank, a position he held for 10 years until 2009.

But now, he has been plucked from his humble farming life in Tzaneen to steer the SA economy.

Mboweni takes over from Nhlanhla Nene, who asked to be relieved of his duties over the weekend following controversy about his previously undisclosed meetings with the controversial Gupta family.

Nene apologised to the nation for having shown poor judgment in meeting with the family during the years when he was deputy finance minister and then finance minister under Jacob Zuma, and for not having disclosed these meetings earlier.

It was reported on Sunday that the apology caught Ramaphosa by surprise.

The EFF rejected his apology, while the DA went on to ask the public protector to investigate a Public Investment Corporation deal involving Nene’s son to determine if Nene abused his power in any way in ensuring that deal was signed, or whether there was any conflict of interest.

Nene was controversially axed in December 2015 by Zuma in what became known as “Nenegate”. He told the state capture commission last week that he believed that happened because Nene was reluctant to sign off on a more than R1 trillion nuclear build programme with Russia.

Ramaphosa brought Nene back as finance minister earlier this year in his first cabinet reshuffle as caretaker president following Zuma’s recall by the ANC in February. Nene replaced Malusi Gigaba, who was moved back to Home Affairs.

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