Aug 29, 2020

Tito Mboweni: South Africa's finance minster known for a Twitter roast chicken fail

Far from the cliché of a grey-suited quiet man of numbers, South Africa's Finance Minister Tito Mboweni appears to relish stirring up trouble on Twitter both at home and abroad. His most recent tweets to his more than 870,000 followers criticising the president of neighbouring Zambia earned him the wrath of many in that country, and a chastisement from his own President, Cyril Ramaphosa. South Africans took the opportunity to mock him over the culinary disaster with rugby captain Siya Kolisi using the moment to show his own skills in the kitchen. "Last weekend, reacting to President Edgar Lungu's sacking of Zambia's central bank governor, Denny Kalyalya, he wrote:"Presidents in Africa must stop this nonsense of waking up in the morning and fire a Central Bank Governor! You cannot do that. After a backlash from Lusaka, Mr Mboweni in typical outspokenness refused to back down: "Looks like I am in trouble about my statement on the dismissal of the Bank of Zambia Governor! I stand by my statement. Central Bank independence is key. Not negotiable. Let all central bankers speak out!". South Africa's president reprimanded him over the tweets and issued an apology to the Zambian government over what he described as "Unfortunate remarks" and promised to make sure the incident does not happen again.

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