Pravin Gordhan could be forgiven for continuing to sleep with one eye open despite yesterday's ANC statement criticising the Hawks for their ''Hollywood-style'' public hounding of the finance minister. Stressing that no one was above the law, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe did little to conceal his distaste for the ''unnatural'' way the special police unit had investigated the minister's role in setting up an investigative unit at SARS in 2007, when he was the revenue service's commissioner.Mantashe also used the opportunity to slap down his deputy, Jessie Duarte, and Local Government Minister Des van Rooyen, for criticising Gordhan for refusing to report to the Hawks as ordered.The ANC boss also tilted at the hitherto untouchable Eskom CEO, Brian Molefe, for his opposition to the government's renewable energy and independent power producer policy.Molefe, billed as a likely successor to Gordhan if President Jacob Zuma reshuffles his cabinet, has resisted the Treasury's efforts to investigate an especially lucrative coal deal with a company owned by the president's close friends, the Guptas.Mantashe's comments, made after deliberations by the ANC's national working committee, will give Gordhan's supporters hope that he will now be left to do his job - helping to turn the economy around and ward off a disastrous downgrading of the country's sovereign credit rating.But Mantashe has come out to bat for Gordhan before. He tore a strip off the Hawks in February after it emerged that they had demanded - during Budget week - that the minister answer 27 questions about the SARS unit. The campaign against him continued.And Zuma last week assumed responsibility for the state-owned companies Gordhan must turn around to stop the fiscus bleeding money.Even if a decision is taken not to bring the tenuous charges against Gordhan, expect his powerful opponents - in and out of the cabinet - to dog his every step...