Ebrahim Patel

Among other areas of work, his Ministry helped to secure a decision by two large auto-makers to bring the assembly of minibus taxis to South Africa, resulting in more than 83 000 taxis produced locally by the end of March 2019. Minister Patel has advocated policy measures to promote deeper localisation which has impacted positively in a number of sectors, including food processing and clothing, footwear and home textile production.

He chaired the Inter-Ministerial Committee set up by President Cyril Ramaphosa for the Investment Conference held in October 2018. The Conference was the turning point of a new social compact between government and investors, leading to pledges of R300 billion by a group of South African and international investors. Subsequently, South African Reserve Bank data showed that foreign direct investment during 2018 grew substantially, with R71 billion net FDI flows into South Africa, the highest in five years.

His Ministry coordinated the work on a new economic strategy for South Africa, the ‘New Growth Path’, adopted by Cabinet in October 2010, which identified the centrality of employment as a development strategy, and set out a number of ‘jobs drivers’ in the economy. Since the adoption of the New Growth Path to December 2018, 2,9 million net new jobs have been created in South Africa, bringing total employment in the economy to 16,5 million.

The Competition Amendment Act, 2018 broke new ground on competition policy, with a focus on addressing economic concentration and abuse of dominance, including stronger statutory provisions on price discrimination, predatory pricing, excessive prices and abuse of buyer power (monopsony).

As part of efforts to strengthen governance and avoid the impact of improper corporate influence or state capture over public entities, he directed the IDC to review its dealings with Oakbay Resources, a company the IDC had funded and which was majority-owned by the Gupta family, which led to litigation by the IDC against the company. In March 2016, he requested the IDC to review its dealings with Oakbay. In October 2016, he requested the IDC Board to review its policy on public disclosure of clients and asked that the information on all clients supported by the IDC, including politically exposed persons, be made publicly available, a decision that was implemented during the first half of 2017. In July 2017 he directed the IDC to replace its auditors KPMG, a company that had become embroiled in the state capture saga. In 2017 he requested the IDC to appoint respected Advocate Geoff Budlender to review the IDC relationship with Oakbay. The IDC became the first public entity thereafter to litigate against a company owned by the Gupta family, a group of brothers who became synonymous with state capture and corruption in South Africa.  

During the period when there were battles in the ruling party over issues of state capture, he was seen to be associated with then Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, and with trade union federation COSATU and a group of progressive academics and business persons. In 2016, he called on workers at the National Congress of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU) to fight corruption and state capture, the first such call made by a Cabinet Minister at a trade union Conference. In September 2017, he publicly released the results of a modeling study on the cost of corruption and state capture in the infrastructure space, stating it could cost the economy R27 billion annually and result in at least 76 000 jobs foregone in the economy.  This was the first official estimate that was made during the period when Jacob Zuma was still President of South Africa.

The Infrastructure Development Act, 2014 provided a statutory framework for the integration of economic and social infrastructure in the country.

He was part of the South African delegation at several ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including at Singapore, Seattle – which he attended together with Zwelinzima Vavi, head of Cosatu – and Geneva.

He led discussions with organized business and the trade union movement that led to a number of social Accords on: Skills Development (2011), Youth Employment (2013), the Green Economy (2011) and on Local Procurement (2011).

His most recent tripartite negotiations were the conclusion of the Framework for South Africa's Response to the International Economic Crisis, adopted by Nedlac in February 2009.

In 2009, he led the labour engagement with government leaders as part of the preparations for the G20 Summit, when a small global labour team met with Presidents Motlanthe (South Africa) and Lula (Brazil), Prime Ministers Gordon Brown (UK) and Kevin Rudd (Australia) and the heads of the International Monetary Fund (Dominique Strauss Kahn) and WTO (Pascal Lamy). Following its deliberations, the summit agreed to a combination of economic stimuli measures and greater regulation of financial markets.

Ebrahim Patel was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Economic Development in 2009 and was reappointed in 2014. He currently serves in the Cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

He was awarded a special medal by UCT in 2008 at the June graduation ceremony, in recognition of his public service.

During the past 10 years, he directed the IDC, to increase the levels of support for industrialization, including opportunities for youth entrepreneurs, entry of women into the economy, green energy, technology innovations and black industrialists. The IDC increased the size of the loan book from R8.8 billion in March 2008 to R30.7 billion in March 2018, helping to grow South African industrial output in sectors such as mining, metals, textiles, food and beverages, chemicals, auto-production and steel making, as well as the beneficiation of local raw materials and the level of renewable energy used in the national grid.

He was also the lead negotiator for organised labour at the 1998 Presidential Jobs Summit convened by President Mandela and at the Growth and Development Summit convened by President Mbeki in 2004, both of which resulted in key policy documents being agreed.

He was nominated by President Mandela to serve on the Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC) during its first term. He has served on a number of other public bodies, including the Council for Higher Education (CHE), the Council of the University of Cape Town (UCT), the governing Board of the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and the board of Proudly SA. He was a labour representative on the Presidential Working Group and on the business-labour Millennium Labour Council (MLC). He has been an executive council member of Nedlac since its formation in 1995. He also served on a joint committee of the Judicial Services Commission and Nedlac to interview applicants for posts to the Labour Court and Labour Appeal Court.

He received the Global Leaders of Tomorrow award from the Davos-based Global Economic Forum in 1994.

He was the lead negotiator in 1993 in the National Economic Forum that put together an interim plan on jobs and combating customs fraud as well as promoting a new framework for small enterprise development.

He was part of the drafting team in 1993 that put together the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) that was the ANC's election manifesto during the historic 1994 elections that led to the establishment of democracy. In 2009 he was again part of the team that finalised the 2009 ANC Manifesto and contributed with his colleagues in the formulation (among others) of the decent work conception of the Manifesto.

Patel was a member of the first trade union delegation that met Nelson Mandela at his home in Soweto after his release from prison in 1990.

He was part of the amalgamation of the NUTW with other unions to eventually become the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, formed in 1989 in Cape Town. He served in a number of positions in the union, and was elected deputy general secretary in the early 1990s, and became General Secretary in 1999 - a position which he held until 2009.

He has concluded hundreds of recognition, wage and other collective agreements over the period of more than two decades. His work in the clothing, textile and footwear industry resulted in the formation of a national bargaining council in the clothing sector and later in the textile sector. He worked to improve productivity and competitiveness at a number of enterprises while retaining and expanding the rights of workers. These included work with Levi's Strauss and the largest clothing company, the Seardel Group which employs 14 000 workers. He has served on the Board of Zenzeleni Clothing, a clothing company set up by the trade union in 1988 to help employ retrenched workers and which is still in operation, employing about 120 workers. He played a key role in 2008 in saving the Seardel Group from bankruptcy through raising a R250 million capital-injection and a change in the ownership and control of the company.

Patel joined the textile union, the National Union of Textile Workers (NUTW) as a full-time organiser in 1986, having worked on a voluntary basis with the auto, food and textile unions during his period at the School of Economics.

While working at the University of Cape Town, he unionised fellow workers from 1983 and was elected a shop steward at the university and led the negotiations on wages and working conditions. Later he was elected General Secretary of the union and became involved with the union movement in Cape Town and took part in the debates and meetings that led to the formation of Cosatu in December 1985.

In 1982 he was detained on a third occasion and taken to Protea Police Station in Soweto.

He left university to work full-time at SALDRU, the research division of the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town in the first half of 1982 and completed his degree part-time at UCT shortly thereafter.

He started his tertiary education at the University of the Western Cape in 1980, but due to delays from being politically active, he ended up completing his BA (Bachelor of Arts) degree through the University of Cape Town a few years later.

During his first year at the University of the Western Cape in 1980, he was a leader in a nationwide student uprising that started in Cape Town. He was detained under Section 10 of the Internal Security Act and was kept for a number of months at Victor Verster prison in Paarl. He was released without being charged.

He also helped organise the nationwide anti-apartheid general strikes/stayaways that rocked the country during the 1980s and 1990s.

During the late 1980s, he led the Cosatu campaign on a Workers' Charter that laid the basis for the workers' rights clauses in the South African Bill of Rights in our constitution. He was also part of the Cosatu team that negotiated the language of the labour rights clauses in the constitution with the ANC during the Constitutional Assembly discussions that led to the adoption of the country's new constitution.

He completed high school in 1979 and was one of the top 10 matriculants nationally, which afforded him bursaries and scholarships that led him to complete a university degree.

Patel became involved in worker and student struggles while at high school and led the student boycott of Fatti's and Monis products during a worker strike at the pasta factory in March 1979

Ebrahim Patel (born 1962 in District Six in Cape Town) is a South African cabinet minister, who holds the position of Minister of Trade and Industry. He previously served as Minister of Economic Development from 2009-2019.

Patel was born in Cape Town in 1962 into a working-class family, with his mother, a garment worker, being the sole bread winner.