Tito Mboweni dies
Former South African Reserve Bank governor and finance minister Tito Mboweni has died at 65.
“It is with deep sadness that the Mboweni Family announces the passing of Mboweni,” his family said in a statement on Saturday night.
“The family is devastated by Governor Mboweni’s passing after a short illness. He passed away in a hospital in Johannesburg on Saturday night, surrounded by his loved ones.”
The family requested privacy, saying they were coming to terms with the enormous loss and promised to provide more detail in the coming days.
Mboweni was born on 16 March 1959 in Tzaneen, Limpopo.
He obtained a BA in Economics and Political Science from the National University of Lesotho in 1985.
In 1987, he obtained a Masters degree in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia in England.
Before his appointment as Minister of Labour in 1994 in the late former president Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, Mboweni was deputy head of the Department of Economic Policy in the African National Congress (ANC).
He also represented the ANC on several domestic and international platforms.
Mboweni was the eighth governor of the South African Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2009. He joined the SARB in July 1998 as an advisor to the governor.
He was appointed Minister of Finance in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet from 9 October 2018 to 5 August 2021.
Mboweni resigned from Parliament on 1 February 2022.
He was the regional advisor for Goldman Sachs, the chairperson for Accelerate Property Fund and the non-executive director of Zijin Platinum in South Africa.
Mboweni was also known for sharing his culinary exploits on Twitter/X, where he dubbed himself “The Duke of the Duchy of Makgobaskloof.”
His followers on the platform would regularly tease his cooking, and Mboweni was always good-natured about it.
One of his recent posts is embedded below.