The South African economy has not functioned properly under the former ministers who got sacked during the Cabinet reshuffle at the end of March this year, president Jacob Zuma said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
During a parliamentary question and answer session, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane asked Zuma if he agreed that the economy is in the doldrums due to his \u201crecycling of finance ministers\u201d, which had caused considerable policy and leadership uncertainty.<\/p>\n
On March 31, Zuma removed Pravin Gordhan as finance minister along with his deputy Mcebisi Jonas, as well as former energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Derek Hanekom as tourism minister from their positions among others.<\/p>\n
In the immediate aftermath of the reshuffle, the rand lost 11% versus the US dollar, but has regained some value in the following months.<\/p>\n
Apart from currency volatility, South Africa\u2019s sovereign credit rating was also downgraded to junk status by ratings agencies Standard & Poor\u2019s and Fitch, which both cited the change in ministers as one of their reasons for cutting South Africa\u2019s credit rating.<\/p>\n
Zuma on Thursday maintained that South Africa\u2019s economic woes should be attributed to low global growth and not domestic factors alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is in this country a situation that is found globally,\u201d Zuma told members of Parliament. \u201cThere are many countries in difficulty \u2013 and some are worse than South Africa. At a certain point South Africa performed even better (than other economies).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bad in all countries, even in those where ministers haven\u2019t been changed. You can\u2019t pin down the economic position in South Africa to the removal of a minister. In other countries, economies are down without removing ministers. I\u2019m correcting you,\u201d Zuma told Maimane.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ministers may have been changed, but the (economic) situation is what it is because of global circumstances,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s not the truth that “once a minister is changed then the economy goes down”.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe economy has not been functioning with those ministers in place. It\u2019s not a magic wand that once you remove a minister the economy goes down.\u201d<\/p>\n