South Africa’s president replaces finance minister, again

But Sunday’s announcement appointing Gordhan to the post has calmed jitters, sending the rand surging almost five percent on Sunday evening.

The Banking Association South Africa has commended President Zuma for listening to the public.

Mr Zuma replaced Mr Nene with a relatively unknown parliamentarian, David van Rooyen, unnerving investors in an ailing economy whose investment grade status is already at risk.

He had, after “serious consideration and reflection”, made a decision to reinstall Gordhan, who was finance minister during Zuma’s first term as president. A similar, though less violent, thought may have been passing through the mind of South African president, Jacob Zuma, when he fired his finance minister recently.

Now, Zuma says he has reconsidered that decision.

The statement said government’s commitment to diversifying the economy, reduce the cost of doing business and utilising resources much more efficiently to enable a more inclusive economic growth remains important.

Ensuring an even stronger alignment between the Budget and the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) in the interest of stimulating more inclusive growth and accelerated job creation while continuing the work of ensuring that our debt is stabilised over the medium term.

The dismissal of little known ruling party legislator David van Rooyen was Zuma’s second firing following his sudden sacking of respected finance minister Nhlanhla Nene on Wednesday, which touched off a storm of criticism and collapsed the rand currency.

Zuma’s dramatic turnaround occurred after the rand tumbled to historic lows and bond yields jumped the highest it’s been in seven years, following his decision to axe respected African National Congress (ANC) member Nene. The minister had earlier rebuked Dudu Myeni, chairwoman of state-owned South African Airways and a close ally of Zuma, for mismanaging a 1 billion rand (RM273 million) deal with Airbus.

President Zuma on Wednesday announced that he had removed Nene as finance minister but gave no reasons for the removal.

On 10 December 2015 the Hashtag “ZumaMustFall” had sparked social media platform Twitter ablaze.

In a similar reaction, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) National Spokesperson, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, said Zuma’s announcement has reduced the country to a “banana republic”.

The #ZumaMustFall group on Facebook, which was created yesterday and so far has just over 4 000 likes, is hoping to borrow from the impact of the #FeesMustFall movement and rally South Africans behind the call to remove Jacob Zuma as president.