Knowledge Malusi Nkanyezi Gigaba (born 30 August 1971) is a South African politician who represents the African National Congress (ANC) in the National Assembly. He served as a cabinet minister between 2010 and 2018, with stints as Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Public Enterprises, and Minister of Finance. He returned to the National Assembly in the May 2024 general election after a hiatus from frontline politics.
Gigaba joined the government of South Africa in April 2004 as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs under President Thabo Mbeki and was promoted to the cabinet by President Jacob Zuma in October 2010. Thereafter he served as Minister of Public Enterprises from November 2010 to May 2014 and Minister of Home Affairs from May 2014 to March 2017, when Zuma controversially appointed him to replace Pravin Gordhan as Minister of Finance. Zuma's successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, demoted him back to the home affairs portfolio in February 2018. He resigned from the government and National Assembly in November 2018 under sustained public and political pressure, arising from a finding by the High Court and Public Protector that he had lied under oath in a lawsuit brought by the Oppenheimers' Fireblade Aviation.
In 2022, the Zondo Commission recommended that Gigaba should face criminal investigation for allegedly receiving corrupt payments from the Gupta family during his tenure in the cabinet. His critics associate him closely with the project of state capture allegedly pursued by Zuma and the Guptas in that period, accusing him of using his position as public enterprises minister to interfere with the governance of state-owned enterprises. In the home affairs portfolio, a parliamentary inquiry found that Gigaba had improperly granted South African citizenship to members of the Gupta family in a naturalisation process riddled with fraud and other irregularities.
Born in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, Gigaba rose to prominence as three-term president of the ANC Youth League from March 1996 to August 2004. He has been a member of the ANC National Executive Committee since December 2002 and served one term on the party's National Working Committee between 2013 and 2017. He also led the ANC's national election campaign in the 2014 general election.
Early life and education Gigaba was born on 30 August 1971 at Eshowe in Natal Province, now part of KwaZulu-Natal. He grew up in the area, attending primary school in Mandeni. The second of five siblings, he has three sisters and a brother. His family was comfortably middle-class; his father, Jabulani Gigaba, was an Anglican priest, and his mother, Nomthandazo Gigaba, was a nurse. He later said that his upbringing was "both religious and clean". He matriculated in 1988 at Vryheid State High School.
He attended the University of Durban-Westville, completing a bachelor's degree in pedagogics in 1991 and a master of arts in social policy in 1993. His master's research focused on urban affairs and policy and his dissertation, about land invasions in Cato Manor, was adapted for publication in Development Southern Africa in 1996. At the university he was a founding member of the Education Students Society and a member of the Geography Students Society.
He was also active in student anti-apartheid politics. He became politically active as a teenager in 1985 and participated in the Congress of South African Students, South African Youth Congress, and Young Christian Students. As a university student, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), ANC Youth League, and South African Communist Party (SACP) when they were unbanned in 1990 during the negotiations to end apartheid. In 1993 he was chairperson of his university's branch of the ANC-aligned South African Student Congress.
ANC Youth League Gigaba rose to political prominence in the leadership of the ANC Youth League's Southern Natal branch, serving a stint as its chairperson and becoming its provincial secretary in 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic elections; in that capacity he was an ex officio member of the mainstream ANC's Provincial Executive Committee, then chaired by Jacob Zuma.
At a league conference in March 1996, Gigaba was elected to succeed Lulu Johnson as national president of the ANC Youth League. He became the first league president to serve three consecutive terms, gaining re-election in March 1998 and April 2001. At the 1998 conference, he defeated a leadership challenge from Lassy Chiwayo, and at the 2001 conference, apparently with the support of Peter Mokaba and other members of the league's "old guard", he defeated a leadership challenge from David Makhura and Mahlengi Bhengu.
At Mokaba's funeral in June 2002, Gigaba called for the youth to boycott the Mail & Guardian newspaper in protest of its critical reporting on Mokaba and his links to HIV/AIDS denialism.
Parliament: 1999–2001 In 1997 Gigaba worked full-time for Macsteel as a consultant. Thereafter, between 1999 and 2001, he served half a parliamentary term as an ANC representative in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament. Elected to the seat in the June 1999 general election, he resigned on 19 November 2001, after the April 2001 conference resolved that the league president should work on league business full-time.
Succession: 2004 Though Gigaba's league presidency entitled him to ex officio membership of the ANC National Executive Committee, he was directly elected to a five-year term on the committee at the ANC's 51st National Conference in Stellenbosch in December 2002. By number of votes received, he was ranked 39th of the 60 members elected to the committee. Ahead of the conference, he had been a vocal supporter of ANC president Thabo Mbeki's successful bid for re-election, declaring that, "The positions of president and his deputy are sacrosanct – there will be no challengers".
At the league's next conference in August 2004, Gigaba did not stand for re-election as league president, ceding the office to his secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula. Gigaba and Mbalula were reportedly close confidantes who had planned their political careers together.
As league president, Gigaba was frequently criticized for the league's uncritical support of the mainstream ANC's national leadership under Mbeki, with opponents labelling him Mbeki's "lapdog". However, he graduated from the league with an excellent reputation among observers of ANC politics. Regarded both as politically gifted and as highly ambitious, he was "earmarked as among the best young leaders to come out of the organisation". His supporters widely viewed him as a potential future president of South Africa.
National executive
Home Affairs: 2004–2010 In the April 2004 general election, Gigaba returned to the ANC's caucus in the National Assembly. Announcing his second-term cabinet on 28 April 2004, President Mbeki appointed Gigaba to serve as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs under Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. The Mail & Guardian described his appointment as "Mbeki's overture to the youth". He remained in the portfolio for the next six years, serving through the remainder of Mbeki's presidency, the entirety of Kgalema Motlanthe's presidency, and the first eighteen months of Jacob Zuma's presidency.
Public Protector investigation In 2007, Gigaba caused a minor scandal when there were reports that he had sent R1,020 worth of flowers to his wife at the expense of the Department of Home Affairs. Gigaba said that the flowers had been expensed to the department because of an administrative error and he undertook to pay back the department in full.
In September 2007, the Public Protector announced that it would investigate the flower purchase and other allegations of improper conduct against Gigaba, especially an allegation that he had used his ministry office to establish the private Malusi Gigaba Institute of Leadership and to pay associated travel expenses. But the investigation was long delayed; it was not closed until February 2009, when the incumbent Public Protector, Lawrence Mushwana, reported that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. However, Mushwana noted that Gigaba did not "cooperate properly at all" with the investigation and recommended that the Speaker of the National Assembly should follow up on his non-compliance.
Polokwane conference At the ANC's 52nd National Conference, held in Polokwane in December 2007, Gigaba was elected to a second term on the ANC National Executive Committee, ranked thirteenth of 80 members by number of votes received. Zuma unseated Mbeki as ANC president at the same conference, and observers described Gigaba as "seamlessly" switching alliances from Mbeki to Zuma in pursuit of his own political ambitions.
Public Enterprises: 2010–2014 On 31 October 2010, in a major reshuffle, President Zuma promoted Gigaba to the cabinet, where he replaced Barbara Hogan as Minister of Public Enterprises. He was deputised by Ben Martins, and from 2012 by Gratitude Magwanishe.
From the outset of his tenure, he was noted for his overtly interventionist stance with respect to the governance of state-owned entities, which supporters linked to the ANC's policy of state-driven economic growth. However, in 2011, he was the first cabinet member, other than mining minister Susan Shabangu, openly to oppose the ANC Youth League's new pro-nationalisation mining policy. In August 2011, he told a meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce that the nationalisation debate "harms the good image and investments of the country". The league issued a strong rebuke of Gigaba in response, for which league secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa faced disciplinary sanctions. In what was viewed as a pro-Zuma gesture, Gigaba continued to criticise the incumbent leadership of the league under Julius Malema, later describing them as anarchists.
Alleged state capture Gigaba's tenure in the public enterprises portfolio became highly contentious in the late 2010s due to revelations that massive corruption had occurred at state-owned enterprises during the same period, in what was later commonly referred to as state capture. The corruption was often alleged to have benefitted companies linked to the Gupta brothers, and Gigaba was a known associate of the Guptas and had visited their Saxonwold compound on several occasions. The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and other critics described Gigaba as having been an "architect of state capture", "the engine of state capture", and "a Gupta stooge". Betrayal of the Promise, a seminal State Capacity Research Project paper on state capture, said that Gigaba had inaugurated the "systematic reconfiguring" of state-owned enterprises such that their governance structures "became broadly representative of 'Gupta-Zuma' interests".