South Africa's first black Reserve Bank Governor Mr Tito Mboweni spends his first full day in his new post today after outgoing Governor Mr Chris Stals vacated the position at the weekend, having served as Governor for 10 years.

But Mr Mboweni, who was elected to parliament for the African National Congress and appointed as South Africa's first black Minister of Labour, is taking up the appointment after serving as the Reserve Bank's governor-designate since July last year. During that time Mr Mboweni, who has a BA Honours in economics from the University of Lesotho and an MA in development economics from the University of East Anglia, has undergone a crash course in the skills and theory of central banking.

Aside from his relative lack of experience as a banker and his comparative youth (he is 40), a major concern about Mr Mboweni's appointment is his past as an ANC cadre, parliamentarian and cabinet minister. It has led to fears that his party political loyalties will jeopardise the Reserve Bank's independence. These have been accentuated by the appointment of another ANC stalwart, Mr Gill Marcus, as a deputy governor of the bank.

But Mr Mboweni, who cut his formal ties with the ANC after being appointed Reserve Bank Governor-Designate, has gone out of his way to emphasise his determination to uphold the independence of the bank: "I am very clear about what the constitutional requirements are. The central bank is an independent institution and should operate as such . . . For me the independence question is a dead issue".

Mr Mboweni has acted firmly to dispel expectations that his succession to Mr Stals will lead to spectacular switches in Reserve Bank policy. "It will be business as usual," he stresses. One central message has emerged during the past week as Mboweni prepared to take over from Mr Stals: inflation-targeting will be the central plank of Reserve Bank policy. Where Mr Stals sought to actively intervene in the market to defend the foreign exchange value of the rand, Mr Mboweni believes the rand will look after itself if inflation is kept under control.

For the immediate future the present informal inflation target of between two and five per cent will remain, Mr Mboweni states. His first major speech as Governor, scheduled for August 24th, may spell out his inflation-targeting priority in greater detail.