One of my earliest recollections of Tito Mboweni, who died on Saturday, was a visit to Times Media in the early 2000s where he brazenly declared to assembled editors that “everything was on the record”.
This was, of course, the former minister of labour, responsible for a raft of legislation that ingrained an inflexible labour market (though he always fiercely rejected that characterisation, saying it was perfectly flexible if people just followed the law). His recasting as central bank governor in 1999 had taken many by surprise, but it showed astute political thinking by then president Thabo Mbeki.
As the first black and ANC-appointed governor, the role needed a character who could champion independence and wrangle political opposition, especially from the left. Mboweni simultaneously defended the independence of the bank and threw open the doors of the normally guarded institution to public scrutiny.
At that meeting two years later at Times Media, he glowed with pride about enabling public tours of the hallowed institution, which now regularly had gaggles of schoolchildren traipsing through it. He seemed determined to turn the Bank’s black edifice in Pretoria, a classic of apartheid kragdadigheid architecture, into a new SA institution. Transparency was the hallmark of his governorship, with the introduction of inflation targeting in 2000, published monetary policy reviews a year later, and live TV coverage of monetary policy press conferences.
As governor, he had to contend with serious banking crises. The small bank crisis rocked the economy shortly after he took on the role, as the record interest rates driven by his predecessor Chris Stals took their toll on credit markets.
In 2003, Saambou collapsed, leading to a terrifying moment in banking stability as contagion sparked upwards, causing a run on the next biggest bank, BoE. Putting Saambou into curatorship had been a fraught decision, with finance minister Trevor Manuel doing so against the advice of the then-registrar of banks.
Mboweni quietly sided with Manuel, to the fury of the bank supervisors. As the fire sparked by that decision raged, Mboweni and Manuel took the unprecedented step of jointly announcing an unconditional guarantee for the deposits of BoE. The open-ended nature of the guarantee meant that BoE had to be taken over by a bigger bank to allow the authorities to exit.
Mboweni was, famously, a lot of fun. He revelled in throwing parties at the official governor’s residence, despite preferring to live in his beloved Killarney flat or even more beloved farm in Magoebaskloof. He introduced an annual year-end party for journalists, where the whisky would flow and the wine cellar raided, mocking the ghosts of apartheid-era governors in whose tastes the house was furnished. Ever the raconteur, Mboweni would still be holding court at 2am, swilling Lagavulin, with most journalists discretely ignoring that earlier declaration that everything was on the record.
Heading the Bank was a high point of his career, and everyone, with his encouragement, continued to call him governor. I remember asking at the time whether he would ever return to politics, maybe for the finance ministry which he had been known to covet. “Why would I?” he replied, “I earn much more as governor.”
But it ended somewhat unceremoniously in 2009 on expiry of his second term, despite making it widely known that he was keen for a third. Jacob Zuma had taken the presidency four months before the end of the contract and simply didn’t renew it, choosing instead to appoint former deputy governor Gill Marcus to the role. Whether for that, or more profound reasons, Mboweni became a stout opponent of Zuma, fighting state capture wherever he could.
Mboweni went into business, taking on a raft of board directorships. He and I would talk often, sparring about banking policy — for reasons I could never understand, he thought there was some merit in the idea of a(nother) state bank.
Over one of our breakfasts at the Royal Horseguards Hotel, his favoured London haunt, he confided his disappointment that he’d not landed a position as chair of one of the big four banks, which he considered logical for a former governor.
Officially he let everyone know he wanted to be appointed ambassador to the Court of St James, as the London diplomatic posting is officially known. Instead, his next career turn was to eventually find himself in the finance ministry, though not quite in circumstances of his choosing. He was leant on by Cyril Ramaphosa into the role, at a time the country’s fiscal position was in free fall. Mboweni provided the political cover to turn that ship around, often flatly ignoring ANC policy, though was somewhat absent as a minister.
When Covid-19 struck, Mboweni was quick, along with his Treasury officials, to engage on the economic fallout. One of the interventions was the Covid bank guarantee scheme, an idea first floated by me and colleagues in a paper. When the first iteration of it did not have the desired impact, and we wrote a critique, he called me up and recruited me onto a committee of bankers and regulators to fix it. Many meetings followed of this impromptu task force and at the end a redesigned scheme was put into place, which continues in different form today. It was classic Mboweni.
Mboweni lived large but had an outsize impact on his country. He was an SA hero and friend to many across politics, business and labour. He will be missed.
Stuart Theobald is chair of research-led consultancy Krutham (formerly Intellidex).
This article first appeared in Business Day.
Image Credit: Former Reserve Bank governor and finance minister Tito Mboweni by GovernmentZA licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
