Trevor Manuel

And one of the interesting discussion we had in what is called the budget council, the minister of finance and provincial ministers of finance, I was MSC in the Eastern Cape.

I was fighting the focus on reducing the deficit, right? Trevor Manuel just asked a number of people in the room, all the provinces, and say, how much have we not spent? Those days in 1997, it was a big number.

10 billion combined, all provinces have not spent it.

And he asked me the question, why should I go and borrow money when money is sitting in the bank? So practical experience of knowing these difficult choices.

Right.

Trevor Manuel, Nelson Mandela, just before that was Tupac, RIP.

They were all rolling in a E38 BMW 7 Series.

I got to drive that last month on a rally and I was just wowed.

But in South Africa, where you come from a situation of radical inequality, very poor level of educational attainments for parts of the population due to racist policies under apartheid than before, make absolutely no sense.

You know? It goes back to the famous pronouncement, I think, in 2006 by then Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, who was gloating that South Africa had achieved a budget balance.

And people said, "Well, what difference does it make that we have a budget balance if we haven't achieved or we haven't addressed significantly all of these fundamental challenges that actually require, among many other things, budgetary interventions?" So I think it's one of the key issues, and it, it's one of the things that Report has, I think, in some years dealt with and perhaps could deal with more in the future, which is If you call for a more active role of the state to, to address socioeconomic challenges, there needs to be some very hard thinking around what the state is actually doing, how it is organized, how are people recruited, promoted, how is the functioning of the state serving, perhaps not serving entirely, or perhaps sometimes going against the objectives that are set.

And I think that's, from my point of view, that's coherent with an understanding of economics, which is strong within a port, which is that economics is just part of a broader set of social sciences that try and make sense of the world.

Both matches in Cape Town.

The chairperson of the local organizing committee for the 2027 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup, Trevor Manuel, says he is confident that South Africa is ready to deliver the most successful tournament.

We have a phenomenally strong team.

Recently they visited each of the venues and I think we can report on the fact that all of them are ready.

I mean, let me give you a very concrete example.

I hope Trevor Manuel won't mind me mentioning this.

But, you know, when Jim Wolfensohn was leaving, I rang Trevor up and said, look, the UK, formal UK policy is we do not back the gentleman's agreement of 1944.

That was the formal policy of the Labour government at the time.