Pravin Gordhan, named by President Jacob Zuma as Minister of Finance, has been responsible for building one of the newly democratic government's most successful institutions - the SA Revenue Service (Sars).

His organising ability - honed in underground structures of the liberation movement - was responsible for the tax collections year after year exceeding the budget set for them, and for the first time in the history of the country the service became a body which accepted no nonsense from defiant and devious tax evaders.

Its success was internationally recognised and Gordhan has headed the worldwide World Customs Organisation. He became a familiar face at global forums, sitting at the left elbow of Trevor Manuel, the previous finance minister, who has now been named to head the new National Planning Commission.

Gordhan first became acquainted with Zuma in the 1970s when the latter was released from Robben Island, and Gordhan was in his mid-twenties, and a firebrand leader of the Natal Indian Congress.

Gordhan became secretary of Operation Vula

It was Zuma's task to organise the young firebrands into a serious underground structure of the ANC. Gordhan was part of this, and in the meantime also joined the SA Communist Party, eventually rising to become a member of its central committee.

He was born in 1949 (he passed his sixtieth birthday last month), the son of a jeweller. He took a degree on pharmacy at the University of Durban Westville, and was only sacked from King Edward VIII Hospital in 1981 when his jail time for political activities became too much for the Natal administration to suffer. In the early eighties he was part of the discussions leading to the launch of the United Democratic Front, and after a period of banning and some time in jail, went underground and became secretary of Operation Vula, the ANC's underground network.

He was arrested again in 1990 and charged with terrorism and illegal possession of arms and explosives. The government alleged that he and others conspired to lead a 'people's army' to seize power by means of an armed insurrection.

Meanwhile he also found time to be involved in the creation of the ANC's national education policy, and chaired the ANC education committee.

His most controversial ruling

Gordhan was sent as a joint Natal/Transvaal Indian Congress delegate to the first meeting of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), and sat on the first steering committee which organised Codesa 1. He took control of the daily management committee, replacing the less than energetic Zac de Beer in the chair.

In this role he became much in the public eye as spokesperson for the whole Codesa process. He was speedily recognised as a good chairman, despite the fact that his most controversial ruling - that there was sufficient consensus for naming 27 April 1994 as the date for the election of a transitional parliament which would also write a new constitution - led to a walk-out by the Inkatha Freedom Party and the KwaZulu administration. They never returned.

He entered Parliament in that first election, and served on committees overseeing provincial government and constitutional development, and housing and the public service.

In 1998 he left Parliament to become Commissioner of the Revenue Service.

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