The former South African Finance Minister, who has died aged 75, was reviled by some, misunderstood in some quarters, blindly adored by a few, and respected by many.

This is not exceptional for a person engaged in serving society for a lifetime. Gordhan was a national liberation and post-apartheid leader. As a leader with a legacy and a historical role he leaves an absence we are all reckoning with.

I knew Gordhan well. He was my leader in the anti-apartheid struggle Natal Indian Congress, in the 1980s. He was also a close comrade to a dear uncle of mine, who worked with him in the underground and in various communities.

As part of a younger generation we were constantly invited into engagements with him to work with, amongst and for the people. Meetings, workshops and mass meetings were schools of raising political consciousness for mass work.

He was one of those mature adults who could map the political field, figure out the faultlines against the apartheid regime and astutely grasp moves and counter moves for escalation. He shaped me and many other activists with this political orientation which fed into the bottom up mass politics of the 1980s.

Gordhan took his strategic political orientation and deep commitment to non-racialism into the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, the post-apartheid parliament, the South African Revenue Service, into Cabinet and into his fight against state capture.

Building Mass Power From Below

Gordhan was part of the third generation of activists that rose against apartheid in the 20th century. His political life took off in the 1970s as a student leader at the University of Durban-Westville.

There is a rich catalogue of Gordhan’s key contributions to the struggle against apartheid. He was involved in reviving the Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s. Formed by Mahatma Gandhi in 1894, the Natal Indian Congress was the oldest political organisation in South Africa. This was a crucial initiative to bring back the non-racial tradition after two decades of apartheid suppression.

He chaired the Durban Housing Action Committee organising Indian and wider Durban communities. At the heart of this was organising a civic movement around bread and butter issues.

He was also involved in building the United Democratic Front a convergence of trade unions, community organisations, women's organisations and faith based organisations. The civic organisations spawned through the Durban Housing Action Committee and other organising initiatives brought a powerful community centred impulse into the United Democratic Front, grounded in deep democracy.

In this period, trusted and tested, Gordhan was recruited into Operation Vula led by Mac Maharaj. Maharaj was a veteran of the ANC tasked with this special mission. Vula was a secretive attempt, by the ANC, to build a military capability inside the country to escalate a ‘peoples war’ against the apartheid regime. It was a crucial strategic initiative to reshape the political terrain.

Champion of non-racial solidarity

Gordhan, together with the Natal Indian Congress, actively and successfully resisted the Tricameral parliament in the 1980s. The Natal Indian Congress’ campaign said a loud and overwhelming no to racist division and racial exclusion of the African majority through President PW Botha’s neo-apartheid ‘Koornhof Bills’. In the 1940s and 1950s Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker played this bridge building role with the larger liberation struggle. By analogy Gordhan did the same in his generation, cementing a non-racial tradition in the Indian community and building strategic unity across national liberation forces.

Today with majoritarian African nationalism paying lip service to non-racialism or worse expressing a reverse racism, the legacy of the likes of Gordhan gives us all a basis to advance a principled unity and commitment to radical non-racialism.

He didn’t want to see a polarised South Africa and a country in the grip of race hatred. He fought against this all his life. His autobiographical example is an archive to help us find ourselves again to resist racism and injustice today.

The negotiator

During the transition he helped organise the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress to contribute to multi-party negotiations. Gordhan’s strategic and political skills during the Convention for a Democratic South Africa contributed to crucial breakthroughs on substantive constitutional provisions.

Gordhan chaired the convention which lasted from 1991 to 1994. He also co-chaired the Transitional Executive Council which prepared the country for its first democratic elections.

In this context Gordhan gave substance to ‘sufficient consensus’. It was a political concept to ensure the ANC and National Party could find each other. Gordhan took this further and gave practical expression to a style of politics that steered South Africa beyond adversarial antagonism. Since the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, South Africa exported this model of transition to various conflict zones on the continent and beyond. In many ways it is inscribed with the political dexterity of Gordhan.

Moreover, the current calls for national dialogue to build a new consensus for the government of national unity are certainly working with a rich experience of consensus building in which Gordhan played a pivotal role.

Then he moved into government.

Role in government

As the commissioner for a decade, from 1999 to 2009, he made the South African Revenue Service a nation building institution. The revenue service was positioned and cast in a narrative of ensuring that taxes were for the benefit of the country. It wasn’t just about higher tax yields and efficiencies but rather affirming that the South Africans’ hard earned money went to build the country while the crooks and tax dodgers where being squeezed.

At the revenue service, Gordhan and his team built an institution that exemplified what the developmental state should be all about. A state that delivers to the people. In many ways SARS as a pocket of excellence was an example for all government entities. It embodied the ethos of Batho Pele (People First). Unfortunately the Jacob Zuma wrecking years, (2009-2018), upended this.

When Gordhan became the Minister of Finance in 2009, I maintained an engagement with him about how to challenge neoliberal orthodoxy, the dominant regime of thought in his Ministry which privileged deep globalisation and the power of corporations over democracy.

In this context he willingly entertained a dialogue with Susan George, one of the leading thinkers of the anti-globalisation movement, from the Transnational Institute, on introducing a tax for short term speculative inflows.

There was also Thomas Isaac, then Finance Minister of Kerala, India, who was not pro market but open to other approaches to macro-economics and also pursued participatory budgeting. I also connected Gordhan to other heterodox economists in India.

Alas the neoliberal horse had bolted. Not much came from these engagements. However, I respected Gordhan’s willingness to listen.

When Zuma sacked Gordhan as finance minister in April 2017, many of us rallied and camped outside National Treasury. Our encampment was a rallying call to push back against state capture , the massive looting and repurposing of the state for private benefit under Zuma.

Thousands took the streets demanding Zuma’s exit. This was a pivotal moment in the fight against state capture. With the advantage of hindsight maybe we should not have left the Union Buildings, the seat of government in Pretoria. Maybe we should have gone all the way to bring down the kleptocratic ANC regime. This never happened and is one of those what if questions of history.

Fatal mistake

Nonetheless it also has a bearing on Gordhan’s fatal mistake to lead the ministry of public enterprises. State capture was too deep and the nexus between the ruling Africa National Congress, state-owned enterprises and criminalised interests placed him in a snake pit of deceit, high risk and polarisation.

The Zondo Commission of inquiry into state capture has helped connect the dots and placed the ANC, the party Pravin was loyal to, at the centre of corruption in state enterprises.

He could not win this battle. But as I say goodbye to him I remember him saying rather emphatically to me once, as I led the Gauteng Province of the South Africa Communist Party,

why is the SACP not contesting elections?

He was actually calling for the realignment of left forces against a venal and degenerate African nationalist politics. Is this still possible?

Written by Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand

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