Business Live | 11 June 2020 |

Questionable appointments, or failure to appoint people, remain a blot on the finance minister’s copybook. It raises the question: has he lost interest?

Tito Mboweni is a politician wrapped in contradiction. He clearly thrives on the warm affirmation he elicits from his 778,000 Twitter followers. He knows how to accelerate controversy — praising the cleanliness of Rwanda’s streets, contradicting the ANC leadership, toying with dropping Lesotho’s borders.

Despite mastering the craft of the politician, he seems a reluctant leader. Recently, he described being a politician as a “poorly paying, thankless and abusive job”. If his modesty is to be believed, he was reluctant to accept the poisoned chalice of finance minister.

Though eminently qualified, he has made a string of poor decisions which raises the question: has he lost interest in the hard work of governance?

In three critical institutions, he has either signed off on questionable appointments or failed to appoint boards or leaders.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA)

The FSCA — SA’s first dedicated market conduct regulator — has had no stability at the helm for the past 26 months. Yet its job is crucial: it was conceived to ensure better corporate accountability and protect the public from unscrupulous corporations.

Mboweni has inexplicably failed to appoint a permanent commissioner. Abel Sithole, the former chair of the FSCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Board (FSB), has been a caretaker commissioner for some time. But Sithole’s appointment last month to head the Public Investment Corp (PIC) surely means he can’t do both jobs.

Open Secrets wrote to Mboweni a year ago to ask the reasons for this delay.

Read more here