Pravin Gordhan passes away, 1949-2024

Pravin Gordhan 1949-2024 — A servant of the people who connected the dots of State Capture

Pravin Gordhan at the inauguration in Pretoria of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, 19 June 2024. (Photo: Leon Sadiki / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Pravin Gordhan passed away in the early hours of Friday September 13 surrounded by his family, closest friends and his lifelong comrades in the liberation struggle, family spokesperson Adrian Lackay has announced.

After his retirement, Gordhan fought a short and courageous battle with cancer, said Lackay. His final words were: “I have no regrets, no regrets…we have made our contribution.” He is survived by his wife Vanitha and his daughters Anisha and Priyesha.

From the time he was 22 years old, Pravin Gordhan lived a life in service to South Africa. As a young man in the early seventies, he became an activist against apartheid, first as a leader of the Natal Indian Congress.

A qualified pharmacist, he was fired by the state’s health authorities for his resistance to apartheid. With others, he helped build the network of community organisations which would eventually mushroom into the United Democratic Front.

President Cyril Ramaphosa (left) and former public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan. (Photo: Sebabatso Mosamo / Sunday Times)

While he is best known as South Africa’s most successful taxman and as a slayer of State Capture, for which he and his family were mercilessly attacked, Gordhan had a much richer pedigree. His nerves of steel, so evident as he took on the Gupta family, who were the architects with then president Jacob Zuma of the worst of State Capture, were sown early.

As a young activist, he was repeatedly jailed, but always emerged to return to service. He was one of the birthing fathers of the new order and served as a chairperson of the multiparty negotiations, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, and then became an MP for the ANC in 1994.

A taxman and a finance minister

The new state, left bankrupt by the last apartheid government, needed to urgently bolster the fiscus and fix the Department of Inland Revenue, as the SA Revenue Service (SARS) was then called. He became deputy commissioner in 1998 and took on the commissioner role in 1999.

It was, arguably, the leadership role he most savoured. As the SARS commissioner, Gordhan honed many of the leadership traits he would use in his future political life.

Pravin Gordhan, South Africa’s minister for public enterprises, at the Future of South Africa conference in Cape Town on Wednesday, 7 March 2017. Photo: Halden Krog / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

He transformed SARS by elevating its staff’s purpose from collecting taxes to building a country. He walked the offices and turned SARS around from a paper-based and bureaucratic institution into the modern, tax collecting machine it is today. The institution was so well respected that Gordhan was head of the World Customs Union for six years from 2000.

Gordhan and his team drove up collections, enabling a golden era for South Africa’s fiscus when Trevor Manuel was finance minister. Together, they enabled South Africa’s first (and only) budget surplus.

When Manuel left, Gordhan took up the mantle of finance minister, quickly settling into the National Treasury as a safe pair of hands until he was deployed to a different Cabinet position by Zuma, who could not get the nuclear deal he so coveted past Gordhan and his team who threw regulatory boulders up to prevent it from happening.

Then South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan (centre) and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas (centre right), arrive at the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria for a hearing on Tuesday, 28 March 2017. Then President Jacob Zuma ordered Gordhan to cancel meetings with investors in the UK and the US and return home on Monday, a day after he had flown to London to begin a week-long roadshow. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers Bloomberg via Getty Images)

When Zuma went full-throttle and fired Gordhan as finance minister, as well as his deputy Mcebisi Jonas, the gloves came off. Gordhan turned activist again, using his axing to warn his compatriots to “join the dots” of State Capture.

Zuma appointed Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister but then soon fired him too, to make way for the “Weekend Special” minister Des van Rooyen in 2017. That was a disaster that sent the economy into a tailspin.

Pravin Gordhan, former South African finance minister, speaks during a news conference in Pretoria on Friday, 31 March 2017. Then president Jacob Zuma fired Gordhan and made sweeping changes to his administration in a high-stakes power play. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Then president Jacob Zuma (centre) speaks to then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa (left) and then finance minister Pravin Gordhan (right) before the presentation to Parliament of the 2016 Budget. Photo: Halden Krog / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The ANC stepped in and tapped Gordhan to return and he did, stabilising the economy through a very rough patch. When Cyril Ramaphosa was elected President, he re-appointed Gordhan as his public enterprises minister.

Pravin Gordhan, then South African minister of public enterprises, at a news conference to announce Eskom’s results on 30 July 2019. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In this final position, Gordhan battled to stabilise Eskom and Transnet, the two organisations bulleted by Zuma and the networks which extracted billions from the electricity and rail utilities. He finally retired from formal politics after the 2024 national election, never heralded properly for all he had done.

Joining the dots of State Capture 

Gordhan’s most significant final act of service to his country was his appearance before the commission of inquiry into State Capture in 2018.  He placed the first formal value of the cost of State Capture to South Africa at R500-billion and he placed Zuma front and centre of the State Capture project.

He revealed the dramatic details of how the late ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte had phoned him as the devastation of Van Rooyen’s appointment became clear.

She had said he would get a call from Zuma and that he should not refuse to take on the role of finance minister again. Gordhan faced a term of fire.

The Hawks investigated his time at SARS, famously sending him 27 questions to answer. It was a fishing expedition and as the State Capture inquiry would hear, part of the story of how the capture project infiltrated all levels of the state.

Finally, a family man

Gordhan gave his life to his country. He was also a loving family man – to his two daughters and wife Vanitha. He was well beloved by his extended family, but also by the many young cadres whom he helped mentor into rich political and professional lives.

He is survived by his wife Vanitha and his daughters Anisha and Priyesha.

By Ferial Haffajee and orignally appeared in The Daily Maverick