Who really owns South Africa’s money? The SARB ownership controversy

By Lot Ndamanomhata

The South African Reserve Bank — the most powerful financial institution in the country — is not owned by the people of South Africa.

Its shares are held by private investors, foreign corporations, and elite trusts. This is the story of sovereignty, inequality, and a century-old anomaly that refuses to die.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was established in 1921 following Parliament’s passage of the Currency and Bank Act, making it the oldest central bank in Africa and only the fourth established outside the United Kingdom and Europe.

It has served the country for over a century. But the question of who it ultimately serves has never been more contested.

At its core, the SARB performs functions essential to any functioning state: it issues currency, sets the benchmark interest rate, manages foreign reserves, regulates commercial banks, and acts as lender of last resort.

But unlike the vast majority of the world’s central banks, it does all of this while having its shares held by private individuals, corporations, trusts, and foreign investors — not by the government or the public it ostensibly serves.

1. The Ownership Structure: A “Historical Anomaly”

The SARB has two million issued shares, delisted from the JSE in May 2002 and traded through an internal over-the-counter share transfer facility. As of the last publicly available Shareholders Index (June 2022), the SARB had over 800 shareholders — South African and foreign individuals, companies, commercial banks, unions, and trusts.

Of the 783 shareholders analysed by the Mail & Guardian in 2019, 58 (8.2%) were foreign nationals residing in Germany, Norway, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. [4] No single shareholder may own more than 10,000 of the 2,000,000 issued shares — but the cap has been breached: Old Mutual holds 20,000 shares and the SA Police Widows’ & Orphans’ Fund holds 10,520 — both above the legal limit without apparent consequence.

“The Reserve Bank should be owned by the people of South Africa, not external shareholders.”

— President Cyril Ramaphosa, 2019

Notable Shareholders on the Public Record

Before POPIA 2021 removed the online register, the following entities were publicly identifiable as SARB shareholders:

The Anton Rupert Trust has attracted particular criticism. Anton Rupert was one of the most powerful Afrikaner industrialists in South African history, founder of the Rembrandt Group (later Remgro) and one of the wealthiest individuals in the country’s history.

His trust’s holdings in the SARB have been repeatedly cited as evidence that the bank serves the interests of old-money Afrikaner capital, wealth built partly under apartheid rather than the broader South African public.

The largest foreign block belongs to German shareholders, who hold an estimated 91,850 shares combined, making Germany the country with the highest foreign ownership of South Africa’s central bank, ahead of the United Kingdom. [4] Since POPIA came into effect, anyone wishing to inspect the register must visit the SARB head office in Pretoria in person, by prior arrangement, a troubling lack of transparency for an institution of national importance.

2. The Governance Question: Power Without Policy?

Defenders of the current structure point to the same fact: shareholders have no legal power over monetary policy. Their formal powers are limited to three things:

•           Considering the SARB’s annual financial statements

•           Electing seven of the fourteen non-executive directors on the Board

•           Appointing external auditors

The remaining seven directors, including the Governor and three Deputy Governors, are appointed by the President in consultation with the Minister of Finance.

But critics are not persuaded. While formal policy power rests with government appointees, the seven shareholder-elected directors participate in Board discussions on institutional governance — and with institutions of this magnitude, governance is never truly separate from policy direction.

The ANC Youth League Crisis Committee argued in parliamentary submissions that “private shareholders would protect their own private interests” and that “an institution with the responsibilities of the SARB could not be subject to private interests.”

“Private ownership of the Reserve Bank undermines South Africa’s sovereignty. This institution cannot be subject to private interests.” — ANC Youth League Crisis Committee, Parliamentary Submission

In 2017, the share valuation debate revealed something deeply concerning. While official SARB figures valued shares at R1.55 each, a Mail & Guardian report argued some were being valued at R470,019 per share — suggesting shareholders were attempting to profit from political uncertainty around nationalisation. The ANC’s 2017 Nasrec conference explicitly warned that nationalisation must happen “in a manner that does not benefit private shareholder speculators.”

3. The Global Picture: Nations Without Their Own Banks

South Africa is not alone in this arrangement, but it is in rare — and arguably troubling — company. The following eight countries do not have their central banks fully owned by their governments:

1.South Africa, 2. Italy, 3. United States, 4. Belgium, 5. Switzerland, 6. San Marino, 7. Japan and 8.  Greece.  

In the United States, the Federal Reserve is owned by its member commercial banks,  not the government and not the public. Its twelve regional Reserve Banks are technically private entities a model that has attracted its own fierce criticism from American economists and politicians.

What does it mean when a country does not own its own central bank? At minimum, it means that ultimate accountability is divided — and that corporate interests are nonetheless present in the institution’s governance. It raises the critical question: whose interests does the bank ultimately serve when push comes to shove?

4. The Dangers and Advantages of Private Ownership

Dangers & Criticisms

• Creates a perception and possible reality that elite financial interests have a seat at the table of the nation’s most powerful financial institution

• Shareholder-elected directors participate in Board governance, blurring the line between public mandate and private interest

• Foreign shareholders (German, British, US, Norwegian) raise direct sovereignty concerns: foreigners have a formal role in South Africa’s central bank governance

• Opacity increased after POPIA 2021 as the public can no longer easily see who owns the bank

• Share speculation during nationalisation debates may benefit wealthy shareholders at public expense

• The Anton Rupert Trust and similar entities represent apartheid-era wealth concentration still embedded in post-apartheid institutions

• Undermines democratic symbolism: the money supply of 62 million people is partly owned by fewer than 800 private parties

Arguments in Favour

• Shareholders have no legal power over monetary policy as the repo rate, inflation targeting, and regulatory decisions rest entirely with government-appointed executives

• Private shareholding was the original capitalisation mechanism in 1921, a pragmatic necessity, not a conspiracy

• The SARB’s independence is constitutionally protected, ownership does not determine independence

• Dividend entitlement is capped at just 10 cents per share, shareholders receive almost no financial benefit (maximum R2,000 per year)

• Most profits after tax are transferred to the South African government, not shareholders

• The SARB is rated among the most transparent central banks in the world

• State ownership is no guarantee of good governance, many state-owned central banks globally have lost independence to political interference

5. The Nationalisation Debate: A Century-Old Battle Renewed

The push to nationalise the SARB is not new. At the ANC’s 54th National Conference at Nasrec in December 2017, the ruling party formally resolved that the SARB should be “100% owned by the state,” calling its private ownership structure a “historical anomaly.”

This resolution exposed a deep ideological rift within the ANC. On one side: those who saw nationalisation as economic sovereignty and transformation.

On the other: technocrats and market-aligned figures who warned that even the appearance of threatening the SARB’s independence would trigger investor flight and currency collapse.

They were not wrong about the market reaction. In June 2017, the release of the Public Protector Absa Bankorp report caused the rand to fall from R12.79 to R13.05 against the dollar, triggering the sell-off of R1.3 billion worth of South African government bonds. In July 2017, when the ANC policy conference proposed nationalisation, the exchange rate was hammered again.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), under Julius Malema, moved faster than the ANC. In August 2018, Malema tabled the South African Reserve Bank Amendment Bill, a seven-page private member’s bill that would delete all clauses related to private shareholders and make the state the sole shareholder, without compensating current shareholders.

The bill faces vehement opposition from the Democratic Alliance, the National Treasury, the banking sector, and several ANC MPs. The National Treasury’s Director-General Chris Axelsson warned during 2025 parliamentary hearings: “It would be a forced takeover like an expropriation… bilateral investment treaties could drag South Africa into international legal fights.” As of 2025, public hearings remain ongoing in Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance.

“What is the problem with government being the sole shareholder on behalf of the 61 million people of South Africa?”— EFF MP Omphile Maotwe, Parliamentary Hearing, 2025

6. Does the SARB Serve the Public — Or Its Shareholders?

The SARB’s primary mandate, enshrined in the Constitution, is to protect the value of the currency in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth. Its main tool is the repo rate — which determines the cost of credit for businesses and households across the country.

Critics argue that the SARB’s inflation-targeting framework adopted in 2000 with a target band of 3–6%  has systematically prioritised the interests of creditors, investors, and bond markets over those of workers and the unemployed. When inflation rises, the SARB raises interest rates. This protects financial assets (including those of the bank’s own shareholders) but simultaneously increases the cost of mortgages, car loans, and business credit for ordinary citizens, while suppressing growth and driving up unemployment.

The numbers are staggering. South Africa has one of the highest rates of inequality in the world — the World Bank consistently ranks it as the most economically unequal country on the planet. The top 20% of the population holds over 68% of income, while the bottom 40% holds only 7%. Over the past decade, South Africa’s economy grew by an average of just 0.7% per year far slower than comparable middle-income countries leaving real GDP per capita below 2007 levels.

Youth unemployment exceeds 50%. Broad unemployment sits near 33%. Against this backdrop, the question of whether the SARB’s monetary framework has served ordinary South Africans is not academic it is existential.

What is beyond dispute: economic growth in South Africa since 1994 has disproportionately benefited those at the top of the income distribution. The SARB’s relentless focus on inflation control, to the partial exclusion of growth and employment mandates, has not gone unnoticed by those left behind.

7. Lessons from the North: The Bank of Namibia Model

NAMIBIA: A CONSTITUTIONAL MODEL FOR CENTRAL BANK SOVEREIGNTY

Across the Orange River, Namibia offers a compelling counter-model. The Bank of Namibia (BoN) was established in 1990 immediately after independence, enshrined in Article 128 of the Namibian Constitution. It is fully owned by the Government of the Republic of Namibia. There are no private shareholders.

This does not mean it is without independence. The Bank of Namibia Act of 2020 — one of the most comprehensive central banking statutes on the continent — explicitly requires that the Bank “must be independent and must act without improper or undue influence and without fear, favour, prejudice or direction from any person or authority.” The removal of the Governor is permissible only for incapacity or gross misconduct.

 Under former Governor Johannes !Gawaxab (2020–2025), the BoN maintained low inflation, grew the Welwitschia sovereign wealth fund from N$270 million to ~N$479 million, and redeemed a US$750 million Eurobond in full and on time. All profits flow to the Namibian government strengthening public finances and flowing to the population at large.

South Africa can learn from Namibia that central bank sovereignty and central bank independence are not opposites they are complementary. A government-owned central bank, properly insulated by constitutional and legislative protections, can be both accountable to its people and free from political manipulation.

8. Conclusion: The Sovereignty Question

The SARB’s private ownership structure is, in a formal sense, limited in its practical impact on monetary policy. The shareholders do not set the repo rate. The Governor takes orders from no corporate trust. The bank’s profits flow, after dividends, to the state.

But sovereignty is not only about who controls the levers in a crisis. It is also about symbolism, legitimacy, and alignment. A central bank that is partly owned by the Anton Rupert Trust, by 16 German investors, by British shareholders, and by a clutch of elite financial institutions cannot claim, without embarrassment, to be wholly aligned with the aspirations of 62 million South Africans with 49% of whom live below the poverty line.

The ANC has talked about nationalisation for almost a decade without acting. The EFF’s bill is stalled in Parliament. The National Treasury warns of legal and financial consequences. The investors watch and wait. And ordinary South Africans who hold no shares in their own central bank, who pay rising interest rates on home loans, and who watch 50% of their youth remain unemployed continue to ask a simple question that no one in power has yet answered satisfactorily:

“Whose bank is this, really?” — The question South Africa has been avoiding since 1921

The Namibian model a constitutionally-anchored, government-owned, independently-operating central bank shows that the question has an answer. South Africa’s reluctance to pursue that answer tells us something important, not just about the SARB, but about whose interests continue to shape the post-apartheid state.

*Lot Ndamanomhata is from Ekoka. This article reflects his views and writes entirely in his personal capacity.

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