[citation needed] Prior to his appointment as Minister of Labour, Mboweni was Deputy Head of the Department of Economic Policy in the ANC.

[citation needed] Mboweni served as Minister of Labour from May 1994 to July 1998 in South African President Nelson Mandela's cabinet.

As governor, he oversaw the launch of the inflation targeting policy to help the bank achieve price stability and dealt with the rand's plunge due to global and local events.

[6] On 9 October 2018, Mboweni was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa as the new Minister of Finance of the Republic of South Africa with immediate effect[3] following Nhlanhla Nene's resignation.

The ruling ANC has always inclined itself towards socialist policies, a stance which has been viewed as a form of appeasing its alliance partners, the South African Communist Party and COSATU.

In an opinion piece, Telkom Group CEO Sipho Maseko slammed Mboweni's proposed reforms for the ICT sector, particularly plans related to the rollout of spectrum, as being "ill-thought-out".

[11] However the response was different in the private sector, CEO of Bridgement Daniel Goldberg during his Sage tour to Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban hailed the plan, saying "it will improve the rate at which big state owned enterprises pays its suppliers consequently increasing efficiency in the economy.

"[13] In June 2020, Mboweni proposed a new austerity policy, to cut the state's wage bill of R160.2 billion over three years and to adopt a Zero-based budget system in order to avoid a sovereign debt crisis in 2024.

[21] In August 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa "strongly reprimanded" Mboweni over comments he made on Twitter about the dismissal of the Bank of Zambia’s governor Denny Kalyalya.