On 31 March 2017, Gigaba was appointed Minister of Finance, replacing Pravin Gordhan, raising suspicions that he was deployed by Zuma to assist him in developing his allegedly corrupt relationship with the Guptas.
On the same day Gigaba was appointed Minister of Home Affairs by President Cyril Ramaphosa following the announcement of his new cabinet, replacing Ayanda Dlodlo.
[9][10][11] In 2014 it was reported that state security agents had investigated a mysterious offshore bank account opened in Gigaba's name, in Dubai, when he was still public enterprises minister.
[14] At home affairs his reputation took a blow when he implemented arduous rules for those travelling with children, creating concerns around South Africa's tourism industry.
[16] In a judgment relating to the Fireblade Aviation case on 27 October 2017, the North Gauteng High Court found that Gigaba had lied under oath during his tenure as Minister of Home Affairs.
The court case related to Gigaba, then Home Affairs Minister, allegedly granting permission to the Oppenheimer family to operate a private terminal at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.
[17] The judge called Gigaba's arguments "disingenuous, spurious and fundamentally flawed, laboured and meritless, bad in law, astonishing, palpably untrue, untenable and not sustained by objective evidence, uncreditworthy and nonsensical".
Judge Malcolm Wallis said in his judgment that "there is nothing to suggest that the issues raised by the minister are of such a nature as to warrant the grant of leave to appeal notwithstanding the lack of prospects of success".
[29][30] A Parliament portfolio committee on Home Affairs in March 2019 recommended that members of the Gupta Family be charged criminally, their South African citizenships cancelled and the information be passed to the Commission of Enquiry into State Capture.
[citation needed] A new structure, formally called the Board Acquisitions and Disposals Committee, was set-up to oversee and supervise large-scale infrastructure spending and tenders worth more than R2.5bn.
[38] Procurement processes were flouted, tenders were unlawfully awarded, contracts were signed off and extended with no accounting to the board, and money was siphoned from Transnet to Gupta-linked companies.
[41][42] One of Gigaba's first moves in 2011 was to overturn a procurement decision on which the Eskom executive and board had signed off – the replacement of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station's steam generators.
The governance of Eskom was captured and repurposed - the next period was the scaling up of grand corruption, with the Gupta Family managing complex brokering and money laundering.
While Glencore was driven into business rescue, the Guptas' firm Tegeta benefited from an Eskom guarantee (R1.6bn), a large and unusual pre-payment (R600m) and additional lucrative coal contracts.
[44][45] The report conclusions included: 'The Committee finds that the Executive arm of government represented by the two former ministers – Gigaba and Brown – was grossly negligent in carrying out its responsibility as the sole Shareholder of Eskom.
[46] and 'recommends that the two former Public Enterprises ministers Gigaba and Brown must make presentations to the Zondo Commission in order to share insights into the roles they played as Shareholder representatives during the period of corruption and corporate capture that flourished at Eskom.
[47] In 2012 Gigaba delayed support for a turnaround strategy for South African Airways (SAA) put forward by then board chair Cheryl Carolus, causing financial damage to the airline.
The reason for these costly failures in SoEs is poor corporate governance, whose seeds sprouted when Minister Gigaba was at the helm of the Department of Public Enterprises.
[49] The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture in South Africa heard evidence that implicated Malusi Gigaba in a number of instances of alleged improper conduct.
The hope is that by exposing and addressing these types of alleged abuses of power, South Africa can move towards greater transparency, accountability, and integrity in its government institutions.