Ebrahim Patel

Ebrahim Patel (born 1 January 1962) is a South African politician and former trade unionist who has been Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition since May 2019.

Patel was born on 1 January 1962 in District Six in Cape Town.

He grew up in Lansdowne and Grassy Park and was raised by a single mother, who was a garment worker.

He became involved in political activism while at high school during the height of apartheid in the 1970s.

In 1980, he enrolled at the University of the Western Cape, where he continued his political organising – he was arrested and detained without charge on three separate occasions between 1980 and 1982.

In 1982, he left the University of the Western Cape to take up a full-time position at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, an economics research institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

He continued studying for his bachelor's degree part-time and graduated later from UCT.

Patel joined the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front in 1983, representing the Lotus River–Grassy Park area, and he was active in related civic organisations, including the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee.

However, his foremost political engagement was through the burgeoning trade union movement.

Having been involved in supporting strikes during his earlier years as a student, he helped unionise university employees in the Cape Province while he was at UCT; in 1985, he was elected as the inaugural general secretary of the university union that was established as part of the initiative.

Also in 1985, he took part in the meetings that led to the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which went on to play a central role in opposition to apartheid.

In 1986, Patel became a full-time organiser for the National Union of Textile Workers, a large Cosatu affiliate which ultimately became the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU).

After Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Patel was a member of the trade union delegation that welcomed him at his home in Soweto, and in subsequent years, as South Africa's democratic transition progressed, he remained involved in social and policy debate.

He was centrally involved in the establishment of the National Economic Forum – for dialogue between business, labour, and government – and he later became the overall convenor for labour on the forum's successor body, the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC).

Raised in Cape Town, Patel rose to prominence in the trade union movement, notably as secretary-general of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union from 1993 to 2009.

In that capacity, he was labour convenor at the National Economic Development and Labour Council during the post-apartheid transition, as well as a member of the executive of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

He deputised Johnny Copelyn as SACTWU's assistant secretary-general until 1993, when he was elected to succeed Copelyn as secretary-general.

According to Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings, "His strategy for the clothing sector became the model for labour market and industrial policy generally."

Particularly influential was SACTWU's decision, under Patel, to pursue the development of a lucrative investment wing.

Through chief executive Johnny Copelyn, SACTWU obtained a large stake in Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), which became a multi-billion-rand company; unlike Copelyn, Patel did not personally obtain shares in HCI.

More broadly, Patel "exerted considerable influence" while at SACTWU, both as a member of Cosatu's central executive committee and through various corporatist forums and public bodies.

In this capacity, Patel helped draft several key agreements and laws; in particular, he has been described as a "key architect" of the Labour Relations Act of 1995.

He was also appointed by President Mandela to the inaugural Financial and Fiscal Commission, and he was the chief negotiator for the Framework Agreement on HIV/AIDS in 2002 to 2003 and for the National Textile Bargaining Council in 2003.

In the international arena, Patel was a longstanding member of the Workers' Group of the governing body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and he served as the group's global spokesperson on employment and social policy.

He was also involved in negotiating and drafting several ILO policy documents.

According to Nattrass and Seekings, he "helped to bring the ILO’s ideology of 'decent work', with modifications, to South Africa."

He previously served as Minister of Economic Development from 2009 to 2019.

President Jacob Zuma appointed Patel to the cabinet after the 2009 general election, and he acquired his current portfolio when President Cyril Ramaphosa created it in a ministerial merger in 2019.

Throughout his time in the cabinet, he has been associated with the pursuit of localisation and industrialisation by means of industrial and sectoral planning.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2009 general election, the Mail & Guardian reported that Cosatu had asked newly elected President Jacob Zuma to appoint Patel as a cabinet minister, in order to increase the union's representation in government.

When Zuma announced his cabinet the following week, on 10 May, Patel was appointed to a newly created portfolio as Minister of Economic Development.

In order to take up the ministerial position, he vacated his SACTWU office and was succeeded by his former deputy, André Kriel.

Both of his ministries have rigorously applied public-interest provisions in South African competition law, frequently imposing developmental and social-responsibility conditions on private mergers, such as the 2011 acquisition of Massmart by Walmart.

Though Patel is a self-proclaimed supporter of the entrepreneurial state and of public–private partnership, his critics object to his interventionist impulses, which, along with his union background, have given him a reputation as a left-wing figure in the government.

In addition, in the 2014 general election, he joined the National Assembly as a representative of the African National Congress (ANC).

Patel's ministerial tenure began with a series of media reports pointing to tension in the cabinet, the result of the unclear mandate and jurisdiction of Patel's newly created ministry.

In particular, he reportedly clashed with Trevor Manuel, Zuma's Minister in the Presidency with responsibility for national planning.

Leftists in the Tripartite Alliance apparently wanted Patel, rather than Manuel, to be appointed at the head of the National Planning Commission.

In addition, tensions apparently arose because Patel publicly asserted authority over "micro- and macroeconomic development planning", a function that the Public Finance Management Act delegated to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Patel was Minister of Economic Development throughout Zuma's two terms as president, and he was retained in the cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who replaced Zuma in February 2018.