JOHANNESBURG, (Reuters) – South Africa’s government was rocked yesterday by suggestions that a wealthy family with close ties to President Jacob Zuma may have been behind his decision to sack the country’s respected finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December.
Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Gupta family had offered him Nene’s job but that he had rejected it immediately on the grounds that such a move violated South Africa’s democracy.
Jonas’s claims are likely to further undermine Zuma’s credibility and roil South Africa’s markets. Both have already been damaged by a public row between police and the man who eventually became finance minister, Pravin Gordhan.
Zuma alarmed investors and caused the rand to tumble in December when he first replaced Nene with David van Rooyen, a little-known politician with no financial background. Under a barrage of criticism, he then abruptly replaced van Rooyen just days later with Gordhan, who had held the job from 2009 to 2014.
Jonas said yesterday he had been offered Nene’s job before van Rooyen.
“Members of the Gupta family offered me the position of Minister of Finance to replace then-Minister Nene,” Jonas said in a statement. “I rejected this out of hand.
“The basis of my rejection of their offer is that it makes a mockery of our hard-earned democracy, the trust of our people and no one apart from the President of the Republic appoints ministers.”
