(Bloomberg) – Tito Mboweni, the first black governor of the South African Reserve Bank and who gained attention from financial markets and businesses by maintaining tight fiscal controls over the country’s public spending, has died. He was 65 years old.
The presidential palace announced late Saturday that the former governor had died after a “short illness.”
Mr Mboweni served as central bank governor from 1999 to 2009 and as finance minister from October 2018 to August 2021.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We have lost a leader and compatriot who served our country as an activist, economic policy innovator and defender of workers’ rights.” “As governor and finance minister, he focused on fiscal discipline and economic transformation.”
Mboweni was appointed finance minister during President Ramaphosa’s first term, when he promised to fight corruption and restore confidence in the economy, which had languished for nine years under former president Jacob Zuma. .
Mboweni previously served as Labor Minister in South Africa’s first democratic government after white minority rule ended in 1994.
“Tito Mboweni has distinguished himself in a variety of strategic roles in the private sector and has been a standard-bearer in global forums for our economy and the wider developing economy," Ramaphosa said.
One of Mboweni’s main achievements at the central bank was increasing the country’s foreign exchange reserves from less than $10 billion to nearly $40 billion.
After working at the Reserve Bank, Mr Mboweni joined the private sector as Goldman Sachs Group’s South African advisor. He also served as Chairman of AngloGold Ashanti and served on the boards of various other companies.
The ruling African National Congress said Mboweni helped the Reserve Bank introduce inflation targeting and maintain price stability in a “fragile post-apartheid economy”. The central bank governor was a member of the party’s highest decision-making body, the National Executive Council.
“His contributions in this area helped guide South Africa through economic turmoil, and he was widely respected locally and internationally for that,” the ANC said. “Although his term was short, he guided the country’s economic policy during a critical transition period following the resignation of his predecessor.”
(Updates Mboweni’s career details from the fourth paragraph onwards.)
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