Gordhan died in hospital in the early hours of Friday morning after battling cancer, his family said in an e-mailed statement.
A veteran anti-apartheid activist and high-ranking member of the ANC, Gordhan made a name for himself within government by leading an overhaul of the national tax agency years before serving under Zuma.
Recruited to the post in 1999 by then-finance minister Trevor Manuel, Gordhan served as commissioner of the South African Revenue Service for a decade and transformed it into a world-class organisation, overhauling its systems and recruiting a new team of highly skilled personnel. Government revenue more than tripled during his tenure as an additional 1.5 million people were drawn into the tax net.
Zuma was appointed president in 2009 - weeks after prosecutors dropped charges against him of taking bribes from arms dealers - and tapped Gordhan to replace Manuel as finance minister. Gordhan steered the economy through the aftermath of the global financial crisis, and the economy grew by an average of about 1.8% annually during the five years he held the post.
But Zuma repeatedly undermined Gordhan's authority, describing Van Rooyen as the most qualified finance minister he'd ever appointed and rebuffing Gordhan's request to fire tax chief Tom Moyane for insubordination. Gordhan defied Zuma's attempts to open the spending taps and finance a nuclear expansion programme, presenting a national budget that proposed spending curbs and higher taxes.
