Johannesburg : Veteran Indian-origin politician Pravin Gordhan, appointed South Africa’s new Finance Minister by President Jacob Zuma after he fired two of his predecessors within a week, on Monday vowed to stabilise the country’s wobbling economy, the second-largest in Africa.
“We are not going to make reckless decisions. We are going to ensure that the kind of discipline that government has demonstrated since 1994 is the kind of discipline that will continue and nobody needs to fear that we will move in any other direction,” 66-year-old Gordhan told reporters after his appointment.
Gordhan’s appointment came after a huge controversy with mounting pressure on Zuma to quit after he dismissed Nhlanhla Nene as Finance Minister, without giving reasons, drawing widespread criticism even from within the ranks of his own African National Congress. Zuma replaced Nene with the little known David van Rooyen. The country’s currency, the Rand, plummeted to new lows as the news broke.
