Sitting across from Trevor Manuel in a deli along the Atlantic seaboard on a sunny Cape Town winter’s day, it is easy to see why the local business community still treats him with a certain reverence. There is a deep, prevailing public nostalgia for the macroeconomic stability, growth and fiscal discipline that characterised his 13-year tenure as democratic South Africa‘s longest-serving finance minister.
Manuel, however, refuses to dwell in sentimentality.
“The one thing I’ve learned is that you can’t be too precious,” Manuel says, taking a sip of his cortado, recalling the sheer, exhausting workload of his early ministerial years, first building the Department of Trade and Industry from scratch under Nelson Mandela, navigating the brutal tariff adjustments of the 1994 Marrakech Agreement and then taking over the national purse strings.
South Africa is suffering from a profound case of inertia
“I had the view then, I still have it now, that when you are appointed into office in this country, you are very well looked after … but the idea is not to make you wealthy.”
Madiba’s ‘ugly shoes’
When asked about the nostalgia that follows him, he smiles, recalling a lesson from Thabo Mbeki when elected as African National Congress (ANC) president in 1997, replacing Mandela, and questions abound about the big shoes Mbeki would have to fill. “He said: ‘I don’t even like his shoes, he wore ugly shoes.’ I’m saying: ‘It’s not yours.’ You don’t own it. Push yourself, carry on.”
But carrying on has become increasingly difficult for South Africa, a country Manuel diagnoses as suffering from a profound case of “inertia”.
For him, the nation’s economic stagnation is the direct result of critical, self-inflicted wounds that occurred after the ANC’s pivotal 2007 Polokwane conference. He refers to “before Polokwane” as a distinct era of lost industrial opportunity.
After Polokwane
“We had reached an agreement; Airbus was going to build a series of massive aircraft for defence airlift and South Africa contracted into it,” Manuel recalls, the frustration still visible. “We had the opportunity to contribute a significant part of that plan, and we were keen on it because of the industrialisation that follows. Polokwane terminated that.”
He lists other casualties of that political transition: the stalling of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, delays in the hydrogen economy and the abandonment of the Joule, an early South African electric vehicle developed at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). “All of those projects stalled because after Polokwane came …” He lets the sentence hang.
The 2007 Polokwane conference was the then-ruling ANC’s 52nd National Conference, where Jacob Zuma beat Mbeki for the party presidency.
“But I’m not there, so I can’t solve that problem. I can observe it.” Even from the sidelines, however, Manuel’s analytical mind cannot help but design solutions. One of his most enduring concerns is the erosion of oversight and capability within South Africa’s legislative arms.
Technical training for MPs offered, but declined
Shortly before leaving government in 2014, Manuel says he approached Zuma with a proposal to design a technical training syllabus for members of parliament, realising that many lacked the basic capacity to read department gazettes, analyse actual expenditure trends or monitor public cash flows. The offer was declined, with officials wanting to hand his hands-on experience over to highly paid corporate consultants.
What passes for debates in parliament is actually a complete sham
“Consultants want to charge loads of money, don’t understand the value, don’t have the lived experience,” Manuel says. The technical training syllabus still sits with him, but his diagnosis of the democratic deficit remains razor-sharp.
He points to the failures of the proportional representation (PR) system, which has stripped politics of direct constituency accountability, and the total breakdown of local government governance where councillors bypass supply-chain rules for personal gain.
‘Knowledge is valuable when shared’
“I think our democracy needs a lot of repair work,” Manuel says plainly. “What passes for debates in parliament is actually a complete sham. Consider the police committee; parliament needs to look at the fact that our police service has been completely decimated … but members of parliament have no idea. Some of them can’t switch on a computer. So, they go to the department and ask people … and that’s basically what happens.”
As we wrap up, the conversation turns back to the personal. In a country obsessed with political lineage and connections, Manuel is quick to laugh off persistent rumours, such as the false claim spread by political opponents that former South African Revenue Service (SARS) Commissioner Edward Kieswetter is his cousin.
“The EFF said he’s my cousin, and they lost in court,” Manuel laughs. “We are distinctly not cousins. I also studied at Pentech (now Cape Peninsula University of Technology) and went to Harold Cressy as he did, but we’re not cousins.”
As he prepares to leave, returning to a schedule that looks more like a full-time executive career, Manuel offers a final thought on his life’s work. “Knowledge is valuable when shared,” he says.
Having handed over the Old Mutual chairmanship on 5 June, Manuel is now turning his full attention to the continent, spearheading the work for an African Borrowers Club and conceptualising an Atlas of Economic Complexity to reform global debt and rebuild regional industrial trade.
