I had dozens of conversations with the late Tito Mboweni since first encountering him as the  Reserve Bank governor two decades ago. He always spoke more than I did in those conversations. A very serious conversationalist, he would go on about anything economic — from the price of coffee in central Africa to how South Africa’s progress was not fast enough.

The Mboweni I knew had become a reluctant politician. He dragged his feet when President Cyril Ramaphosa invited him to be finance minister in 2018. The communists in the Zuma era had elbowed him out...