The Commission

Acting Chairperson/CE
Bongani Khumalo
Bongani Khumalo is the Acting Chairperson/CE of the Financial and Fiscal Commission. He was previously the Program Manager for Fiscal Policy in the Secretariat of the Commission. He has worked on a variety of areas within the South African intergovernmental fiscal relations system, including the design of revenue sharing formulae, the financing of education, health care and social assistance, and sub national borrowing and taxation issues and on the design of conditional grants. Upon completing a Master of Science (Economics) degree from the University of Zimbabwe, Bongani Khumalo lectured at the same University in the areas of International Trade and Development and Public Finance. He then moved to Rhodes University in Grahamstown in 1994 where he lectured Public Policy, International Trade Policy and Development Economics until 1999 when he joined the Financial and Fiscal Commission as a Researcher. He has published articles and contributed book chapters on Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and on Public Finance. His term of office expires on 28 February 2013.

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Commissioner
Tania Ajam
Tania Ajam is a Public Finance Economist. She is the Director of the Knowledge Centre at the Applied Fiscal Research Centre (AFReC) (Pty) Ltd, a UCT affiliated company and the Managing Director of PBS (Pty) Ltd which implements performance budgeting systems. Tania serves on the Financial and Fiscal Commission as a provincial nominee and her term of office is effective from 01 July 2009 to 30 June 2014.

 

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Commissioner
David Savage
David Savage is specialist in intergovernmental fiscal relations and local service delivery. He has worked in the NGO sector, for the National Treasury, and for the World Bank in South Asia on issues of local government finance, service delivery and institutional restructuring. He has served as a Director of the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit and currently advises on issues of sub-national finance and service delivery both in South Africa and internationally. He holds a Masters in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics, and a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of Cape Town. He is a national nominee who after the expiry of his first term on 28 February 2011, was reappointed effective 1 March 2011 and will now serve on the Commission until 28 February 2013.

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                                                      Commissioner
 Krish Kumar
Commenced work as a Trainee Accountant with the Erstwhile Durban City Council in 1981 and progressed through the ranks to City Treasurer of the North and South Central Local Councils in 1997. In addition, he was appointed as City Treasurer of the Durban Metropolitan Council in 1999. Finally, appointed as Deputy City Manager: Treasury of the eThekwini Municipality in 2001 and currently manages a budget of R23.2 billion. Under his management of the Treasury, the City has never received a qualified audit report and has achieved the highest credit rating for a municipality whilst also receiving numerous awards as the best run municipality and most economically viable municipality. He is a member of South African Local Government Association‘s (SALGA) Finance Working Group, Fellow of the Institute of Municipal Finance Officers (IMFO), chairman of Metro’s CFO Forum, past President of IMFO, member of Sidney Mufamadi Project Consolidate team, project champion of new ERP billing system that is being built locally by the municipality and which it intends rolling out to other municipalities on a non-profit basis, and a member of the Divine Life Society. His guiding philosophy is that work is sacred. He is here to serve with passion and excellence. His favourite quote is “Service to mankind is service to God.” His first term of office expired on 28 February 2011 but he was reappointed effective 1 March 2011 and will now serve on the Commission until 28 February 2013.

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Commissioner
Nelisiwe Shezi
Neli Shezi holds a Masters in Social Science (Economics) from the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg). She is currently the Head of Ithala Development Finance Corporation Limited’s Micro Finance and Co-operatives Division. She was previously an Economics tutor and Research Assistant at the University of Natal; Research Assistant at the Financial and Fiscal Commission and co-author of the Commission’s work on Public Expenditure on Basic Social Services in South Africa; Manager of the Budget Office at KwaZulu-Natal’s Provincial Treasury; and, Process Manager: Entrepreneurial Development and Black Economic Empowerment at Msunduzi Municipality. Her term of office expires on 30 June 2014.

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Commissioner
Lucienne Abrahams
Luci Abrahams is Director of the LINK Centre of the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), a public interest research centre, focusing on themes in social and economic change in an emerging paradigm of ‘network knowledge economies’. She teaches public policy, strategy, innovation theory, knowledge management and e-government, all incorporating an ICT focus. She conducts research on ‘institutions and economic sectors in the network knowledge economy’. Luci serves on the Council on Higher Education. She has also served in various other capacities. These include Council Member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation; Board Member of the National Research Foundation, the State Information Technology Agency and the Development Bank of Southern Africa; Commissioner in the Gauteng Provincial Government; and Director-General of the Department of Welfare and Population Development (now Social Development). She was appointed as a Commissioner commencing on 01 July 2009 and her term of office expires on 30 June 2014.

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Commissioner
Bongiwe Kunene

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Commissioner
Chairperson/CE: Appointment to be announced

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Commissioner
SALGA Appointee: Appointment to be announced