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Much has been written about Pravin Gordhan since his Friday 13 September death. Informed opinions range from depicting him as a god-like idol to satanic evil. His most cited crime was that he privatised South African Airways SAA and was privatising and destroying State-Owned Enterprises SOEs. His final act was to choose to die in a private hospital. Whither NHI?
After a brief pause, the radical left started speaking ill of the dead, accusing Gordhan of heinous capitalism despite being a devout communist and struggle hero. Contrary to their lie, he privatised nothing. Instead, he went to ideologically extreme lengths to preserve nationalisation at any cost.
Social media turned against him. Half a million 70 of social media posts were negative. His loved ones reminded us that he devoted and nearly lost his life in the anti-apartheid struggle, and that he opposed corruption and State Capture. He is credited with excellent revenue collection reforms.
Mindful of those accomplishments, his legacy is one of failure on balance. Although SAA was in no sense strategic or an asset, Gordhan perpetuated the strategic asset myth, including the nonsense that SOEs were government creations. All, like most of what the government does, were started by private enterprise and nationalised. They are vanity liabilities as opposed to strategic assets. None of these apartheid dinosaurs should be perpetuated.
