Trevor Manuel

Manuel (2003)

Trevor Andrew Manuel (born January 31, 1956 in Cape Town ) is a South African politician of the African National Congress (ANC). From 1994 to 2014 he was a government minister, first until 1996 as trade and industry minister, then from 1996 to 2009 under three presidents as finance minister and, after Jacob Zuma took office in 2009, as chairman of the National Planning Commission of South Africa of the presidential administration Rank of minister; He has also been a member of the Executive and Working Committee of the ANC since 1991. Manuel was considered one of the most influential ministers in South Africa and the architect of South Africa's economic boom.

Life

Manuel was affected by apartheid as Colored , he grew up poor in a township on Cape Flats in Cape Town . His parents were Abraham and Philma Manuel, and he grew up with three siblings. His father worked as an employee at Cape Town City Council . As a child, he was confronted with the then formative political conditions in South Africa, when in 1960 black neighbors were forcibly relocated from the Kensington district to Guguletu in police vehicles . He made his first experiences with political engagement in 1969 on the advice of his father in the youth organization of the Labor Party ( Labor Party Youth ), which he ended again because he was exposed to peer pressure among classmates and membership in the Labor Party for participation could not offer any support in the Colored Persons Representative Council .

After graduating from Harold Cressy High School in District Six in 1973, he found a job with a construction company, where he worked for over seven years. Manuel got the post of technical engineer. In 1981 he gave up this job and worked as a volunteer in the organization of the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee (Cahac). A little later, in March 1982, he took over the duties of a sales representative for the Education Resources Information Center , which dealt with the dissemination of publications to citizen groups.

He was inspired by friends at the University of the Western Cape with ideas of the Black Consciousness movement and was thus strongly influenced by the thinking of Steve Biko . This brought him together with actors of the Young Christian Workers who were influenced by Catholicism. At this time Trevor Manuel was working again for a construction company and was in contact with migrant workers from the homeland Ciskei , which brought him closer to their living conditions. These impressions strongly influenced him and as a result of these experiences he stayed ten days in Mgwali near Stutterheim , a black spot , Presbyterian mission location in the east of the Cape Province and the place of work of Tiyo Soga (Bible translator). During the early 1970s he became friends with Toufie Bardien, who, as a former member of the Colored People's Congress, was banned for 15 years because of his activities .

In the 1970s he joined the then illegal ANC, in the 80s he became one of the leading figures in the Cape Town opposition scene, but spent the second half of the decade mostly in custody. In 1989 he took part in the negotiations between the ANC and the government on the end of apartheid. In 1994 Manuel became a member of parliament as well as industry and trade minister in the Mandela government before becoming its finance minister in 1996. He was the most influential “Colored” in the South African government and is considered a critic of the ANC's preference for “blacks”.

During his tenure as Minister of Finance, he consolidated South African public finances. When he stepped down in solidarity with Thabo Mbeki in September 2008 , this led to his share price slide of 4% within a few minutes, although a renewed appointment by the interim president Kgalema Motlanthe had already been confirmed. Even before the term “ BRICS countries ” was coined, he was one of the first to work internationally to adapt the structures of the IMF and the World Bank to the growing importance of these countries. With Zuma's inauguration, Manuel, harshly criticized by the ANC's left wing, switched to the even more powerful post of head of the National Planning Commission , to whom all other ministers are accountable on budget issues.

In May 2011, he was listed as a possible candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as Managing Director of the IMF, a post traditionally held by a European. Strauss-Kahn's successor was his compatriot Christine Lagarde . At the parliamentary elections in 2014 Manuel has not raced for more.

Manuel has been Chancellor of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town since it was founded in 2008 . His term of office lasted until 2014.

Private

He has been married to Maria Ramos since 2008, who was CEO of the state-owned transport company Transnet and has been CEO of Absa Bank since 2009 . The first marriage to Lynne Matthews resulted in a son.

Honors

Honorary doctorates

• 2002: University of South Africa
• 2002: Peninsula Technicon
• 2002: University of the Western Cape
• 2003: University of KwaZulu-Natal
• 2006: Rhodes University
• 2016: University of the Free State

Further awards

• 1994: German Africa Prize (German Africa Foundation)
• Presidential Award (Institute of Personnel Management)
• Woodrow Wilson Public Service Award
• Management Excellence Award ( Wits Business School)
• Newsmaker of the Year (Johannesburg Press Association)
• African Finance Minister of the Year (Euromoney)
• Global Leader for Tomorrow ( World Economic Forum )

Others

• Mandela's cabinet
• Zuma I cabinet

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} South Africa's Trevor Manuel slams 'racist' Jimmy Manyi , In: BBC World of March 2, 2011 (accessed May 17, 2011).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Drechsler: Zuma's Cabinet: Few Surprises, Much Power for Trevor Manuel ( Memento from November 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) , In: Allgemeine Zeitung , Namibia from May 12, 2009 (accessed May 17, 2011).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Shelagh Gastrow: Who's who in South African Politics, Number 3 . Johannesburg 1990, pp. 172-174, ISBN 0-86975-399-1
4. ^ Dictionary of African Biography: Soga, Tiyo . on www.dacb.org ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) 
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Alex Perry: Trevor Manuel: The Veteran , In: Time -Online from March 25, 2009 (English, accessed May 17, 2011).
6. ↑ Sandrine Rastello, Paul Badertsche: Talks Turn to Strauss-Kahn Successor , In: Bloomberg from May 17, 2011 (English, accessed May 17, 2011).
7. ↑ Good-byes Manuel, Motlanthe, Gordhan. ( Memento from June 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on citypress.co.za (English), accessed on May 22, 2014
8. ↑ Manuel's profile on the website of the South African Presidential Administration (accessed May 17, 2011).
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Portrait at Who's Who Southern Africa ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed July 25, 2016 
10. ^ Trevor Manuel and Max du Preez honored with doctorates by UFS. news24.com from June 30, 2016 (English), accessed on July 25, 2016

Web links

Commons : Trevor Manuel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry in Who's Who of Southern Africa (English)