A heated exchange took place on Tuesday in Parliament's finance committee meeting when Economic Freedom Fighters chief whip Floyd Shivambu objected to a Treasury representative because he was not an African.

Shivambu objected to the repeated presence of Treasury deputy director general Ismail Momoniat at finance committee meetings and asked why director general Dondo Mogajane did not appear. He said this undermined African representativeness.

Finance committee chairman Yunus Carrim was furious‚ calling Shivambu to order and saying that Momoniat was a struggle veteran who had been active in the underground struggle against apartheid. Carrim said there was no way that one could elevate former Bophuthatswana leader Lucas Mangope over Indian struggle hero Ahmed Kathrada purely for reasons of race.