David Masondo (born 14 November 1974) is a South African politician who is currently serving asDeputy Minister of Finance since May 2019. He is also the second deputy general secretary of theSouth African Communist Party (SACP) and a member of theNational Executive Committee of theAfrican National Congress (ANC).
Born inLimpopo, Masondo entered politics as a student activist, serving as deputy president of theSouth African Students Congress and later as the provincial chairperson of theANC Youth League from 2003 to 2005. He rose to national prominence as the inaugural chairperson of the SACP'sYoung Communist League from 2003 to 2010. By the end of his tenure in that position, he had broken ranks with the SACP's national leadership to emerge as a political opponent of PresidentJacob Zuma.
From February 2011 to May 2014, Masondo represented the ANC in theLimpopo Provincial Legislature, where he wasMember of the Executive Council for Finance until July 2013 under PremierCassel Mathale. His department was controversially placed under national administration in December 2011. He was elected to theNational Assembly in the2019 general election, whereafter he was appointed as Deputy Minister of Finance underthe second cabinet of PresidentCyril Ramaphosa.
A member of the SACP since 1993, Masondo was first elected to the party'sCentral Committee in July 2007. He was elected to a five-year term as second deputy secretary in July 2022. He joined the ANC National Executive Committee inDecember 2017, and he has been the principal of the ANC's political school, the O. R. Tambo School of Leadership, since it was launched in 2019.
Masondo was born on 14 November 1974[1] inElim, a village nearMakhado in the formerNorthern Transvaal.[2] He matriculated at Marimane High School in Makhado.[3] After high school, he attended Giyani College of Education, where he joined theSouth African Students Congress, becoming its provincial chairperson in 1996 and its national deputy president in 1997.[4]
He went on to theUniversity of the Witwatersrand, where he was president of the student representative council in 1998[4] and where he graduated with a BA,Honours, and MA.[5][3] In 2001, he was reportedly injured in a clash with campus security forces during a student protest against a visit byColin Powell, theUnited States Secretary of State.[6]
In 2014, he completed a PhD in Sociology focusing on Political Economy under the supervision ofVivek Chibber atNew York University.[7] His dissertation, about post-apartheid automotive industrial policy in South Africa, was published in theReview of African Political Economy.[8] His PhD research was supported by aFord Foundation International Fellowship.[2]
In 1999, Masondo was appointed to the National Youth Commission.[4] After his term there, he worked at the headquarters of theSouth African Communist Party (SACP), which he had joined in 1993; he headed the party's political education and youth desks.[2][4] He later served a stint in theprovincial government ofLimpopo, where he was a director in the department of local government and housing, and in 2006 he returned to Wits to pursue his PhD and work as a lecturer inpolitical economy.[5][2][4]
Because of his continued involvement in youth politics, Masondo was named by theMail & Guardian in 2003 as one of 20 politicians who would "emerge as key figures in our public life over the next 10 years";[9] on several occasions in later years, he was one of the newspaper's200 Young South Africans.[4][10]
In December 2003, Masondo was elected as the inaugural chairperson of the newly re-establishedYoung Communist League (YCL) of the SACP.[2] Concurrently with this position, he was elected to the SACP's Central Committee for the first time at the party's 12th national congress in July 2007; he was the most popular candidate in the elections, receiving 989 votes across 1,298 ballots.[11]
In its early years, the YCL, under the leadership of Masondo and general secretaryButi Manamela, was aligned to opponents of incumbent PresidentThabo Mbeki, and therefore to supporters of presidential challengerJacob Zuma. In 2006, for example, whenMazibuko Jara wrote a controversial article questioning the SACP's support for Zuma, Masondo responded in an article calledRed is the Colour of our Flag: In Defence of the Rule of Law, in which he argued thatZuma's corruption trial arose primarily from "a political agenda" related to the ANC's succession battle.[12] Later the same year, Masondo publicly called Mbeki a "dictator" during a press conference.[13][14] However, after Zuma took office as president in 2009, Masondo diverged from Manamela – and from SACP secretary generalBlade Nzimande – in becoming increasingly critical of Zuma. For example, in September 2010, he wrote an opinion piece aboutblack economic empowerment (BEE) inCity Press in which he argued:
BEE is increasingly becoming too narrow, amounting to ZEE, that is, Zuma Economic Empowerment. The recent multi-billion-randArcelor-Mittal BEE deal involvingDuduzane, President Jacob Zuma's son, is another example of how BEE has become too narrow. Only a few can be misled to believe that there is no link between Zuma's rise to the presidency and his family's rise to riches.[15]
During the same period, in 2009, the YCL backedJulius Malema's calls for thenationalisation of themining industry. Asked about the likely effects of this policy for foreign direct investment, Masondo said, "Investment for what and for whom? Investors must invest on our own terms and we must have control over the dividends of our work and resources."[16] Masondo reportedly spoke in support of nationalisation during closed sessions of the ANC's 2010 national general council.[17]
He remained in office as YCL chairperson until December 2010, when he stepped down at the YCL's third national congress.[18] He was booed by Manamela's pro-Zuma supporters at the conference, but he dismissed the heckling as part of a "general pattern of degeneration in the youth movement".[18]
Masondo was also a member of theAfrican National Congress (ANC), the SACP's partner in theTripartite Alliance. From 2003 to 2005, he was the provincial chairperson of theANC Youth League in Limpopo,[4] and he was later a member of the league's National Executive Committee.[2]
On 28 January 2011, Masondo was appointed to theLimpopo Executive Council in a reshuffle by PremierCassel Mathale, who named him to succeedSaa'd Cachalia asMember of the Executive Council (MEC) for Provincial Treasury.[19] His appointment was unexpected but was presumed to be a reflection of his increasing closeness to Zuma's opponents, who included Mathale and his allies in the ANC Youth League.[20][21] In order to take up the office, he returned to South Africa from the United States and was sworn in to theLimpopo Provincial Legislature.[22][21]
After Masondo had been in the treasury for less than a year, thenational government announced in December 2011 that Masondo's department was one of five that was being placed under administration due to financial problems.[23] Masondo's supporters argued that this was Zuma's way of weakening his opponents ahead of the ANC's53rd National Conference, at which Zuma would stand for re-election. As late as 2018, Masondo said, "National Treasury was used to withhold funds due to the provincial government in order to create a cashflow crisis, to justify the disbandment of the provincial government".[24]
Later in December 2011, Masondo was elected to theProvincial Executive Committee of the Limpopo ANC; he was the second-most popular candidate, closely trailingLydia Komape.[25] However, his opposition to Zuma was not the majority position in the national ANC. According to former ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, during this period, Masondo was involved in the discussions that led ultimately to the formation of theEconomic Freedom Fighters, a breakaway from the ANC.[26] According to Malema, he, Masondo, andFloyd Shivambu, contemplating how they would respond to their alienation in the national ANC, had mooted the idea of establishing a new political party:
We had a very lengthy discussion. I remember that day. And we didn't resolve, we therefore left it and then I went toPolokwane, but myself and Floyd then continued the discussion, telephonically and we could see Masondo's reluctance on the political party... We concluded Masondo was dragging his feet.[26]
Masondo's opposition to Zuma's re-election also set him at odds with the majority position in the SACP leadership.[27][28] By the time Masondo left his YCL office in 2010, his relations with SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande were already poor,[18] and tensions intensified in subsequent years, particularly as Masondo was increasingly touted as a candidate to succeed Nzimande.[29][30] At the SACP's next national congress in July 2012, Masondo failed to gain re-election to the Central Committee.[31]
In July 2013,Stan Mathabatha was elected as premier after Mathale was asked to resign by the ANC. On 19 July, announcing his new Executive Council, Mathabatha sacked Masondo, replacing him withRudolph Phala.[32] Masondo remained an ordinaryMember of the Provincial Legislature until the2014 general election.[33]
After departing the legislature, Masondo served a brief stint in theGauteng Provincial Government as a chief director in the provincial Department of Economic Development.[3] In April 2015, he joined the Automotive Industry Development Centre, an agency of the Gauteng Provincial Government, as acting chief executive officer; he was appointed permanently to that position in November.[34]
At the ANC's54th National Conference in December 2017, Masondo was elected to the party'sNational Executive Committee. He was the fourth-most popular candidate in the 80-member committee, behind onlyZweli Mkhize,Lindiwe Zulu, andReginah Mhaule.[35] In a committee meeting shortly after the conference, it was reportedly Masondo who first raised the prospect of removingJacob Zuma from office as president, a motion which came to fruition in February.[36][37] Also in the aftermath of the conference, Masondo was appointed as deputy chairperson of the ANC's subcommittee on political education, deputisingNathi Mthethwa.[38] He was subsequently appointed as the inaugural principal of the O. R. Tambo School of Leadership, the party's political school, which was launched inMidrand in April 2019.[39][40]
Meanwhile, at the SACP's 14th national congress in July 2017, Masondo was not elected to return to the Central Committee, despite lobbying by some of his supporters.[27] However, in June 2019, he returned to the committee by co-option.[41]
In the2019 general election, Masondo was elected to a seat in theNational Assembly, the lower house of theSouth African Parliament. He was ranked 19th on the ANC's national party list.[33] After the election, PresidentCyril Ramaphosa appointed him asDeputy Minister of Finance under MinisterTito Mboweni.[42][43] TheMail & Guardian surmised that he was "set to be groomed to take over the running ofthe treasury".[44] He was characterised variously as "a rising star";[45] as "arguably the most promising member of the ANC's younger generation";[46] and, byRichard Calland, as "young, intellectual, energetic, and one of the few ANC politicians around who still care about policy debate and ideas".[47]
In his capacity as deputy minister, Masondo was appointed to chair thePublic Investment Corporation in November 2021.[48] Mboweni also appointed him to lead the ministry's pro-growth structural economic reform programme, which theBusiness Day viewed as a wise choice because of Masondo's closeness tothe left.[3]
In July 2020, the ANC's internal Integrity Commission recommended that Masondo shouldstep aside from his government and party responsibilities after he was involved in a perceivedabuse of power. The finding arose from a personal dispute between Masondo and a woman, later identified as Palesa Lebitse, with whom he had an extramarital affair. Masondo reported Lebitse to the police, alleging that she wasextorting him, and she was arrested by theHawks in a sting operation on 17 August 2019.[49] It later emerged, through reporting byamaBhungane, that Masondo had offered money to Lebitse in exchange for "peace"; according to Lebitse, Masondo had pressured her to abort a pregnancy in January 2019, and she in turn had pressured him to allow "dialogue" between their families about payment of damages.[50] During a subsequent investigation by theCommission for Gender Equality,[51] Masondo admitted to having had protected sex with Lebitse on one occasion but said that they had not been in a romantic relationship, that he was not responsible for her pregnancy, and that he had not encouraged her to have an abortion.[52]
In any case, in February 2020, theNational Prosecuting Authority declined to prosecute Lebitse on extortion charges.[53] However, Lebitse pursued a civil lawsuit against Masondo, the head of the Hawks, and the Police MinisterBheki Cele, alleging that Masondo had abused state resources and his own political influence in order to effect her arrest, which she said had been unlawful.[54] Masondo approached the ANC's Integrity Commission to seek advice on his response.[55] In July 2020, the commission recommended that Masondo should step aside, with commission chairpersonGeorge Mashamba writing:
Your actions have brought disrepute to the organisation, but in acknowledging this and taking responsibility, you have shown commitment to the organisation and the ideals we strive to reach. We have confidence that lessons have been learnt from the ordeal you are going through. We accept that your lawyers have advised you to report the matter to the Hawks and that you acted on their advice. However, we think that you showed poor judgment and that you should have known that involving the Hawks in a domestic matter would open you up to accusations that you were abusing your power and your access to state resources.[55]
The commission's report also said that Masondo had "never expressed remorse", had provided a "garbled lengthy and nonsensical account" of the saga", and had provided "disappointing, distasteful and patronising" answers to the commission's questions aboutgender-based violence.[56] Masondo said he was surprised by the commission's recommendation,[56] and he did not step aside.
At the SACP's next national congress inBoksburg in July 2022, Masondo made what theSunday Times called "a spectacular comeback" in the party.[57] He was returned to the Central Committee when he was elected, unopposed, to succeedChris Matlhako as second deputy general secretary of the party; he serves alongside first deputy secretaryMadala Masuku and under general secretarySolly Mapaila.[58][28]
Later the same year, Masondo launched a campaign to succeedGwede Mantashe as national chairperson of the ANC.[59] He performed poorly in the nominations stage of the contest,[60] and he was expected to split the vote with Mantashe; both were viewed as supporters of President Ramaphosa.[61] When the ANC's55th National Conference was held in December, Masondo lost resolutely in the chairmanship race; he received only 282 votes against Mantashe's 2,062 andStan Mathabatha's 2,018.[62][63] However, he was re-elected to the ANC National Executive Committee; he received 1,304 votes across roughly 4,000 ballots, ranking him 41st in the 80-member committee.[64] As of 2023, he also remained the principal of the O. R. Tambo School.[65][66]
Masondo is married and has two children.[3] He is the founding chairperson of Topisa Trust, a youth development fund in Limpopo which he established in honour of his mother, Topisa Evelyn Maluleke.[5][3]
On 16 July 2008, while Masondo was YCL chairperson, he was arrested at a roadblock inJohannesburg; according to police, he had been jogging inSandringham when he was stopped at the roadblock, but he had refused to submit to a search and then had assaulted a police officer. He was charged withassault and interference with police duty.[67] The SACP, however, said that it was Masondo who had been assaulted in the altercation and that it would lay a complaint with theIndependent Complaints Directorate andSouth African Human Rights Commission.[68]