Page 150 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

Former President Mandela with former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. /Gallo Images via Getty Images
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Similarly, Guma and his family had been out of South Africa since 1961. He came back to the country in around 1994.
As those in exile returned, the activists were released, and political parties were unbanned. This infused a new urgency within the ANC about firming up its economic policies.
“The issue about SARB independence raised its head in 1991,” recalls Kganyago.
In 1991, the ANC sent a group of activists to a course on macroeconomic management in Namibia. Another group, including Ramos, Moss Ngoasheng and others, went to Germany. The latter group, according to Kganyago, was convinced about the merits of an independent central bank.
The issue was a source of ‘raging debate’ within the ANC, especially among those developing economic policies. More engagement was needed after the Namibian and German excursions.
Between 1991 and 1996 various processes unfolded in the ANC, both formal and informal. There was no consensus about central bank independence in 1991, but there was an understanding that the institution would be fundamental in a post-apartheid context.
Later in 1991, the ANC sent another group of activists to Germany. While there, the group studied institutions that formed part of economic management. The activists spoke to the State Treasury and the Federal Treasury.
Back home in South Africa, the discussions resumed.
Ramos said: “The Constitutional Negotiations team was led on the ANC side by Cyril Ramaphosa, now the President. We were negotiating a range of options around the financial dispensations in the Constitution. The central bank was one [and] there was a huge amount of work that went into this. In the interim Constitution, and then for the final Constitution.”
“We did want a form of independence for the Reserve Bank, which would allow the country to, I suppose, develop and grow the economy sustainably. It wasn’t an unbounded independence, and the Constitution is written like that. Even in the interim Constitution it was written so that the Reserve Bank has independence over the instruments of monetary policy, but not the goal of monetary policy,” Ramos said.
Manuel, who headed the ANC’s Department of Economic Planning, said: “In late 1993, among things that needed to be done was to ask questions about various institutions, including the