No need to nationalise the Reserve Bank, says Paul Mashatile

The ANC’s plans to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will remain on the back burner for the foreseeable future. The party’s treasurer general Paul Mashatile has argued it would not be wise to spend billions of rand on buying out existing shareholders. He argues that the bank is effectively publicly owned and that the word nationalisation was only semantics.

In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Mashatile, who hopes to be elected deputy president of the ruling party at its conference next month, said the ANC had put the issue “in abeyance”, but hastened to add this was not because there was opposition to the idea in principle.