In what is seen as a sop to those, prompted by the Public Protector's remedial action in the Absa matter directing a change in the central bank's mandate, the ANC has agreed that the Reserve Bank should be owned by the state, notes Legalbrief. The party's economic transformation subcommittee head Enoch Godongwana confirmed this yesterday, but added it won't happen anytime soon.

‘It is an anomaly that an institution like the Reserve Bank should be in private hands ... the independence of the Reserve Bank should be guaranteed,’ he is quoted as saying in a BusinessLIVE report.

He said across the world there was a movement away from privately-owned central banks, but SA had not followed that trend. The proposal will now be taken to ANC structures for further discussion. A final decision on the ownership of the bank will be taken at the ANC's national conference in December.

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The presence of the proposal in the final recommendations is seen largely as part of the political manoeuvring between factions, suggests Business Day. It notes a group aligned to President Jacob Zuma failed in their bid to change the bank’s mandate. It appeared that addressing the question of ownership broke the deadlock in a tense discussion around economic issues. Concern that the bank was being targeted by factions in the ANC emerged after Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane directed Parliament to change the bank’s constitutional mandate.

The bank and the Treasury are challenging this in court.

The decision to seek a judicial review to set aside Mkhwebane’s report had been taken primarily to protect the bank’s constitutional mandate, the Treasury said yesterday. Godongwana said there was no intention to tamper with the independence of the Bank.

‘The independence ... is sacrosanct. There is no intention even in the resolution to tamper with that. The Reserve Bank has 650 private shareholders. They have no say in governance. They get standardised dividends; 90% goes to government anyway.’ Godongwana said the ANC led government did not want to buy the shares tomorrow. ‘Even if we wanted to (buy shares), there is no fiscal space to buy them … why should we buy shares when we must be building roads and schools?’ Business Day notes the bank reiterated yesterday that its shareholding had no bearing on the policy or regulatory role it played.

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