Minister Pravin Gordhan also told Reuters Insider in an interview that South Africa currently is using reserve building and currency swap operations to control the rand which has strengthened almost 5 percent against the dollar this year.

Powerful trade unions have led calls to tame the currency via a capital inflows tax but Gordhan said the Finance Ministry was studying other countries’ experiences on this.

“These debates are going on. We will study all pros and cons and evaluate,” he said. “We said in February we will assist the Reserve Bank in buying reserves. At present we are using two options — buying reserves and engaging in swaps.”

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a partner in the country’s governing alliance, said on Tuesday that a non-inflationary way to build reserves would be for South Africa to accumulate gold from the mining companies, which it wants to nationalize.

Gordhan said mine nationalization “is not government policy. Of course in a democracy you have a right to express your point of view and these issues will be debated but we don’t foresee any government policy change on this issue.”

The ruling African National Congress has maintained investor-friendly policies in Africa’s biggest economy but rising unemployment and chronic poverty is piling pressure on the party to show its policies are worth pursuing.

Influential political groups are demanding a leftward shift in the policies — including nationalizing mines — which they say have left too many citizens jobless and poor.

In the lead-up to a policy review next week, the country’s largest trade union group has called for a radical change in policy. ANC’s youth wing is calling for mines to be nationalized. Mining of gold, platinum and coal is a pillar of South Africa’s economy.

The South African Communist Party has called for a state-owned mining company, but not the complete nationalization supported by the ANC Youth League.

The ANC and its allies will meet next week in Durban for a trial run for building a platform for the next general elections in 2014. Business groups will be watching closely.

The party has won every election since the first multiracial vote in 1994 but relies on support from the trade union bloc and from the communist party. The ANC’s youth wing is known for getting voters to the polls.

Analysts say the ruling party will feel pressure to bow to supporters’ demands before the 2014 election.

The union bloc and the communist party — whose members sit on key ANC leadership bodies and in the ANC Cabinet — helped engineer the ascendance of President Jacob Zuma in acrimonious 2007 party elections.

Economist Zamikhaya Maseti said he expects “a radical ANC government to emerge after the party 2012 conference and beyond” because of pressure from the left. Others, though, expect the general free market trends to hold.

COSATU asked for more state intervention in currency rates and redistribution of income. It also proposed the formation of a state bank. The union bloc says Zuma isn’t fulfilling pledges to create decent jobs — in the face of unemployment of at least 24 percent — and share the country’s wealth equitably. It says the Zuma administration is too wedded to market-friendly policies.

“We are headed in the direction of a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state,” COSATU said in a statement. “The ANC-led government should focus on redistribution of income and power in favor of the working class.”

COSATU’s general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, who recently led 1.3 million public service workers on a debilitating three-week wage strike, has hinted at a possible withdrawal of the federation’s support for the ANC at the polls.