Tito is true man of the soil

Geordin Hill-Lewis, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of finance, does not sound like a person driven by emotions. During my first encounter with him this week, he oozed confidence and made a lot of sense in his cool way.

Addressing the Week in Review online debate on the economy with top economist Mike Schussler, the politician, in my view, was believable in his assessment of Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni.

He gave a little insight into Mboweni’s thinking on the economy from an open-minded opposition point of view. As he put it, it sounded strange that he praised his opposite number. As we know by now, Mboweni frequently goes on a mental sabbatical to detox away from the urban hustle and bustle.

He is in the rural Tzaneen more than he is in his Pretoria office. Big cities are just not for him. Even abroad, you hardly see him walking the streets of London or New York doing his shopping. Instead, he prefers the unlikely city of Kigali in Rwanda, his real source of inspiration in terms of African economic development.

At home, Mboweni prefers to stroll in the dusty streets of Tzaneen in Limpopo wearing his worn shoes and an old hat – a typical rural man as he meets and greets locals chatting about cattle. He avoids contact with urban people – not even President Cyril Ramaphosa can get him to answer phone calls.

So when any call comes from these offices, it reminds Mboweni to go for his coat pocket and grab a handful of warmed mopani worms and munch the snack while singing Leave Me Alone. Mboweni belongs to a political party that does not think the way he thinks on the economy and he has his own vision of putting the economy on the right path.

In his world, the economy would be in private hands, the public service wage bill chopped to shreds and all state-owned enterprises sold. Every government department or state entity that misused allocated funds must raise its own budget next time.

That’s because Mboweni, unlike most of his comrades in the governing party, is not a socialist today and a capitalist tomorrow. He wears one cap only: the capitalist one.

Land expropriation without compensation to address landlessness is about the only thing that he agrees on with his ANC fellows. Treasury officials told Hill-Lewis that, when in Tzaneen, Mboweni does not bother to contact anyone but would wait for them to contact him. And he only answers calls in between his cooking.

According to Hill-Lewis, the minister has lost hope as even his Cabinet fellows are not on his side. The DA MP believes Mboweni may be a bit disgruntled, but is the only one in the government who understands the depth of the current economic crisis.

“Big problem with Tito is that he is on his own … and over time, that has worn him down. He is burnt out, a little bit hopeless and a little bit disconnected from his job,” Hill-Lewis says.

His sin is to talk right and act right – unlike his comrades who talk left and act right for the sake of political correctness. So with no political mandate fuelling Mboweni’s thinking, at least munching a snack of mopani worms provides the energy he needs to keep him going in his rural isolation.

Political journalist Eric Naki.

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