Outgoing Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane says the past few years in the job have worn him out and he is quitting despite entreaties to stay on from finance minister Enoch Godongwana.
Speaking to the Sunday Times from his Pretoria office on Friday, Mogajane said he declined numerous requests from Godongwana to stay on because he was exhausted.
“Part of my leaving Treasury is I’ve had enough. I ran more than I could, the last few years were draining. I had to do more than normal. The DG was called on to do more.”
Although he did not mention Godongwana's predecessor, Tito Mboweni, by name, it was an open secret that he held the portfolio reluctantly, which led to frustration among senior officials. Mboweni on Saturday declined to comment on Mogajane's departure.
Mogajane, who steps down in June, has served in the Treasury for 23 years, five of which were as administrative head of the institution. He found himself at the forefront of battles to stave off state capture and thwart efforts to force through a costly nuclear power deal favoured by former president Jacob Zuma.
Then there was plotting… to say this man, no way, if he sets his foot here on Monday he won’t find us senior managers
— Outgoing Treasury DG Dondo Mogajane
He recalled the turbulent weekend in December 2015 when Zuma shocked the nation by firing then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, replacing him with little-known Des van Rooyen. The move is estimated to have cost the economy about R500bn.
Mogajane, who was deputy director general for public finances at the time, described a meeting on the Friday after Van Rooyen's appointment at which Treasury top brass met the new minister and his advisers Mohamed Bobat and Ian Whitley. After that meeting they made a pact not to return to work the following Monday in protest.
Those who threatened to join him in walking out were the then DG Lungisa Fuzile, the head of the budget office, Michael Sachs, and Ismail Momoniat, a long-serving Treasury executive who is now head of the tax & financial sector office.
“We had a short conversation, he introduced [Bobat and Whitley] and said this place is going to change; this place is going to be accessible… then the meeting ended,” Mogajane said.
“Then there was plotting… to say this man, no way, if he sets his foot here on Monday he won’t find us senior managers. We said we have to resign en masse. It was an unco-ordinated plotting. But we knew that if this man comes back he won’t find us here, we’ll resign and make a statement.”
In the face of fierce opposition from within the ANC and in business circles, Zuma was forced to reverse Van Rooyen’s appointment after just four days and bring back Pravin Gordhan.
It was alleged at the time that Bobat and Whitley were proxies of the Gupta family, who were Zuma’s friends and chief architects of state capture.
Mogajane said that by being part of the pushback on Van Rooyen’s appointment and resisting other attempts to capture it, the Treasury had saved the country from certain ruin.
“We had to defend South Africa, we had to make sure things returned to normal,” he said, referring to the roadshows Treasury leaders undertook to reassure investors.
Mogajane described the firing of Nene as the lowest moment of his Treasury career. He said the minister was axed because of the Treasury's steadfast refusal to make provision in the budget for the planned nuclear build programme, which would have meant a commitment of trillions of rands.
As head of public finances at the time, Mogajane said he was specifically tasked by Fuzile to work with a team of energy experts to determine if the country could afford to expand its nuclear reactor fleet. They produced a 52-page document that outlined in detail why the idea was a nonstarter.
“We made it clear it cannot happen; the numbers are too huge and we cannot afford it.”
He and Fuzile had to find ways to insert a line into one of Zuma’s state of the nation addresses stating that SA would only commit to nuclear at “a scale and pace of its affordability”.
Mogajane praised the “foolproof” systems at the Treasury, and the calibre of its leaders, as the reasons it had been able to save SA from state capture and reject projects and requests that were fiscally unsustainable.
He defended the Treasury against accusations that it was a tightfisted “neoliberal” institution that was unwilling to change its stance even in the face of a pandemic-induced economic recession.
He said the finance ministry and the Treasury had to be entrusted to people who guarded the country’s coffers vigilantly, or SA would face certain ruin.
“These two offices can do a lot of damage and a lot good. You have to defend this Treasury, you have to defend this institution, and the calibre of people you have to employ here are those that have this at heart, because you can break the country through [a] signature.”
Mogajane, who has previously characterised SA as a failing state, said he was more optimistic now because promised economic reforms were starting to take shape. These include auctioning radio-frequency spectrum and liberalising the electricity and rail sectors.
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