Gigaba glosses over his role in making this mess

If we didn't know Malusi Gigaba as a "Gupta stooge", as Floyd Shivambu described him before leading an EFF walkout in the National Assembly on Wednesday, we might have suspected the finance minister had undergone an unlikely Damascene conversion on the way to the podium.

Gigaba began his medium-term budget policy statement by quoting the Nigerian poet Ben Okri: "You can't remake the world, without remaking yourself. Each new era begins within."

If the person reading the words hadn't so obviously been Gigaba - the man who bent over backwards to grant citizenship to the Guptas after performing similar contortions to assist them in capturing Eskom - we might have thought he had undergone an epiphany and emerged determined to reverse the damage he and his fellow stooges have done.

But while his delivery was smooth, there was no emotion, no sense of shame or regret, not even a hint of irony when he characterised Eskom's failure of governance, leadership and financial management as "a grave concern ... a significant risk to the entire economy".

To put that risk simply, the government's R350-billion guarantee to Eskom amounts to a liability of R6250 around the neck of every man, woman and child, or R18400 for every individual taxpayer.

It's a crushing weight for the economy to bear, and we should not forget that Eskom's financial position and most other aspects of its performance weakened substantially while Gigaba was public enterprises minister between 2009 and 2014.

The minister did not mention the nuclear deal, an omission that could easily cost him his job in these fraught latter days of the Zuma presidency. But even if he shuffles off into well-deserved obscurity, his central role in creating the grim economic picture he was forced to sketch on Wednesday must not be forgotten.