Jabu Moleketi

Phillip Jabulani Moleketi (born 15 June 1957) is a South African businessman and former politician. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), he was the Deputy Minister of Finance between April 2004 and September 2008. Before that, he was Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Finance and Economic Affairs in Gauteng Province from May 1994 to April 2004. He was a member of the ANC National Executive Committee between December 1997 and December 2007.

Born in Soweto, Moleketi was an underground operative for the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, during the anti-apartheid struggle. After the end of apartheid, he was appointed to the Gauteng Executive Council, where he headed the Gauteng Treasury under three consecutive premiers. Though a senior member of the South African Communist Party, Moleketi was reputed for his pro-market economic policies and was an outspoken opponent of so-called ultra-leftism in the party. President Thabo Mbeki promoted him to the National Treasury after the April 2004 general election, and he was viewed as a likely successor to Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel.

After Mbeki was unseated from his leadership positions, Moleketi lost his position in the ANC National Executive and resigned from government in September 2008. In later years he served as chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and in various private-sector positions, including as chairman of Brait, Vodacom, and iOCO. He currently serves as the Chairman of PPC Limited.

Early life and education Moleketi was born on 15 June 1957 in Pimville, a township in Soweto in present-day Gauteng Province. His father had been a miner and his mother was a domestic worker; neither was literate or politically active, and they lived in a one-room house in Pimville where they raised Moleketi in the Catholic Church. He attended Nchanga High School, a Catholic boarding school in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, but he was expelled in 1973 after he participated in a protest in solidarity with classmates who had themselves been expelled for bringing their girlfriends into the dormitories. There he became involved in Black Consciousness politics through the South African Students' Movement (SASM); other members of his SASM branch included Jackie Selebi—a history teacher at the school—and Murphy Morobe and Billy Masetlha.

After Moleketi's unit's cover was endangered in late 1980, he returned to exile with the ANC. Appointed to that office by the inaugural Premier of Gauteng, Tokyo Sexwale, he continued in the position through the tenure of Premier Mathole Motshekga and the first term of Premier Sam Shilowa.

He was widely respected for his work in the portfolio, described by Africa Confidential as having "a reputation for probity and hard work". The Mail & Guardian said in 1999 that he had built "the finest financial management team – and probably the most racially representative – of any province". His pet initiative was the Blue IQ agency, which ring-fenced a substantial budget for investments in large development projects in Gauteng, including the Gautrain.

Tripartite Alliance positions

For part of his time in the provincial government, Moleketi served as secretary-general of the SACP's Gauteng branch. He was also repeatedly named as a potential candidate for the provincial leadership of the ANC and the premiership of Gauteng, but the Mail & Guardian observed in 1997 that he lacked a strong constituency in the ANC's local branches. Instead, Moleketi joined the ANC National Executive Committee in December 1997; he was elected to his first five-year term by the ANC's 50th National Conference, ranked as the 57th-most popular member of the 60-member committee by number of votes received. He was re-elected in December 2002, ranked 47th.

Political views

I do not go home and lock myself in a room and cry because I spoke to Harry Oppenheimer. He is a nice old man, and Anglo American is a key player. I leave the Utopian dreaming to the far left. I am a man of action, I believe that we should have a vision. — Moleketi on his pragmatic politics in 1995 A City Press profile described him as believing "that South Africa can only achieve socialism through a capitalist economy".

In a controversial interview in 2001, he castigated the SACP for taking outdated and unsophisticated policy positions and for failing to develop its political role beyond acting as the mere "voice of Cosatu". Moleketi also defended, against charges of neoliberalism, the ANC's prevailing macroeconomic economic policy under President Mbeki, a fiscally conservative and market-oriented programme called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR); per Moleketi, the experience of the People's Republic of China showed that pro-capitalist policies like privatisation were not necessarily "anti-communist". Critics dismissed its rhetoric for leaning on "the politics of paranoia" and on "McCarthyism, liberal usage of red herrings, and what can only be described as a Qur’anic approach to Marxism–Leninism".

Deputy Minister of Finance: 2004–2008 In the April 2004 general election, Moleketi left Gauteng to take up an ANC seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament. Announcing his second-term cabinet on 28 April, President Mbeki named Moleketi as Deputy Minister of Finance. He was expected to be groomed as prospective successor to the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel. He also represented the government on the local organising committee that was preparing for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa; he chaired the technical coordinating committee.

At an early stage in his tenure, in 2005, Moleketi reportedly approached the ANC with a proposal for systematically relaxing South African labour laws in service of the development of a dual labour market. The policy proposal was strenuously opposed by trade unions.

Moleketi served less than a full parliamentary term in national government. At the ANC's next national conference in Polokwane in December 2007, Moleketi was among the several members of Mbeki's government who failed to gain re-election to the ANC National Executive Committee. On 23 September 2008, in response to the announcement that the new ANC leadership had forced Mbeki to resign from the national presidency, he and Manuel both joined the large group of ministers and deputy ministers who announced their own resignations from government.

After Kgalema Motlanthe was announced as Mbeki's successor in the presidency, Manuel's spokesman said that both Manuel and Moleketi were willing to return to their former positions in Motlanthe's government. However, while Manuel returned to the Treasury, Moleketi did not, and he also resigned his seat in the National Assembly on 25 September. Nhlanhla Nene replaced him as Deputy Minister of Finance, and Sicelo Shiceka filled his seat in Parliament. He was subsequently courted by the nascent Congress of the People, the group of Mbeki supporters that ultimately broke away from the ANC.

Career in business Soon after leaving the government, Moleketi launched his career in the private sector. In 2009, the Mail & Guardian reported that he was being considered to succeed Mark Moody-Stuart as chairman of Anglo American. Later that year, he was appointed to the board of Remgro and succeeded Mervyn King as non-executive chairman of the board of asset manager Brait SA. He was appointed to the board of Vodacom in November 2009, and he went on to succeed Peter Moyo as Vodacom's chairman between July 2017 and July 2020, when he ceded the role to Saki Macozoma. In 2018 he was additionally appointed as the chairman of cement maker PPC Limited. In 2020, he was appointed as chairman of the board of technology company iOCO.

Moleketi has also served as chairman or director of three affiliated unlisted investment companies, Harith Fund Managers, Harith General Partners, and Lebashe Investment Group (iOCO's black economic empowerment partner). His interests in these companies became controversial in 2018 when opposition politician Bantu Holomisa wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa demanding an inquiry into alleged corruption at the PIC, formerly chaired by Moleketi; among other things, Holomisa described Harith and Lebashe as a "cartel" that had improperly acquired PIC funds and profited from the putative conflict of interest that arose from Moleketi's former government offices. Testifying at Lex Mpati's judicial commission of inquiry into the PIC in 2019, Moleketi strongly denied Holomisa's allegations.

Moleketi also remained periodically involved in the governance of public entities. He was the chairman of the state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa until December 2018. In addition, in 2017, Gauteng Premier David Makhura appointed him as the chairperson of a newly established 14-member provincial economic advisory panel. In May 2026, Carol Paton reported that the ANC had invited Moleketi to return to politics as the party's candidate for Mayor of Johannesburg in the November 2026 local elections; Moleketi declined.

Personal life Moleketi is married to former cabinet minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. The couple met in exile at an MK camp in Angola and married in Lusaka, Zambia in 1983.