Despite the obvious effects of a Cape Town cold, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel sang a happy song popularised on the stands of English football clubs at the start of his hour-long media briefing in Parliament on Tuesday. He sang: "When you walk through a storm hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark…"

He made much of the stormy weather that has broken on the global economy, and he told members of the National Assembly as he presented his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement that the storm has arrived. "It is fiercer than anyone could have imagined and its course cannot be predicted." He also quoted a Xhosa tag: "Liduma lidlule" - "The thunder will pass".

The minister was also in a musical mood as he answered a question about the pressure he is feeling from the left wing of his party.

He recalled a song from the Rocky Horror Show. "Take a jump to the left," he sang. "Let's do the time warp again."

But he was keen to dispel the idea that the weekend economic summit of the governing tripartite alliance was able to make policy for the government. Asked about the demand for a basic income grant that emerged from the conference he said that policy making is the prerogative of the quinquennial conferences of the ANC. He recalled that there was a recommendation for a basic income grant that was put to the Polokwane conference, but that no such policy decision came out of it.

"Policy is not made on the hoof," he said.

Since his spirits seemed so low (his cold perhaps) I-Net Bridge asked him whether he did not need a deputy finance minister to help him. He gave the standard answer that it was not up to him: it was up to the president to appoint ministers and deputy ministers. But he acknowledged that he missed having a deputy.

At the end of his speech he went out of his way to thank the former deputy minister Jabu Moleketi. He also said that it was appropriate for him to express his "sincerest appreciation" to former president Thabo Mbeki and former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

I-Net Bridge