Since his March suspension, suspended tax boss Tom Moyane has tied up the processes to clean up the SA Revenue Service (Sars) in knots.
His latest letter to Ramaphosa has pushed both of them into a decision-marking cul-de-sac, after a lengthy fight at every turn has kept him in office on a full salary for seven months now. It is a situation in which Moyane has successfully side-stepped responding directly, or under oath, to any allegation put to him.
If Ramaphosa has not concluded by now that Moyane is dragging him further and further down a rabbit hole in a bid to play for time, the president has not been paying attention. However, what is more likely is that he is giving Moyane the proverbial long rope to hang himself.
South Africans were unaware of the true extent of the mess at Sars in March when Moyane was suspended. They were unaware of the culling of the tax agency, through a predetermined restructuring based on conniving between Moyane and international consultancy Bain.
The fact that the contracts with Bain and IT consultancy Gartner were both wholly irregular, with the latter one benefiting a close friend of Moyane, was further damning evidence against the errant tax boss.
The true extent of the culling of Sars's institutional capacity under Moyane is now clear for all — even his allies — to see, and the severe emotional trauma inflicted on loyal staffers at every level has been laid bare.
All of this emerged during the public hearings at the Sars commission of inquiry. Even some within political circles, sympathetic to Moyane, expressed shock at the extent of his misrule. But most importantly, the taxpayer is now witness to what has been to done to the institution entrusted with their own contribution to the state.
Still, Moyane challenged Ramaphosa at every step on technicalities and procedure, since the first conversation the pair had in March when Ramaphosa informed Moyane that he had lost confidence in him.
Moyane refused and the next day, wrote to Ramaphosa threatening to take legal action against him, if he went ahead and suspended him. Ramaphosa suspended Moyane anyway, in a stinging letter in which he reminded Moyane that he was no ordinary Sars employee.
It is instructive to return to that letter, in which the president states that the “disrepute” into which Moyane has brought Sars and the government and the “risk to the national revenue fund” are “enormous”.
This has all since proved true through the public testimony and documentary evidence placed before the Sars commission, tasked with looking into the reason behind the R50bn revenue shortfall.
Ramaphosa added that Moyane has not been willing to acknowledge his failures or the consequences of his actions.
“Your position is not one of any ordinary employee. Your obligation to be responsible for the performance of Sars and its functions impacts on the public purse and therefore the well being of the nation as a whole. This is an exceptional circumstance that requires urgent and immediate action,” Ramaphosa wrote at the time.
This is a critical weapon in Ramaphosa’s arsenal in untangling the trap being set for him by Moyane.
Moyane in his latest letter to the president complains that the chair of the Sars commission, retired judge Robert Nugent, had no right to meddle in employee matters.
Nugent had recommended that Moyane be suspended.
The judge, however, stressed that Moyane’s removal was not based on employee matters, but on the management of Sars, which falls squarely into his terms of reference. Moyane’s attorney argues that this argument holds basis in law.
The letter rages about Moyane not being afforded the right to confront his accusers — which happens to be dozens of senior, long-serving Sars employees — which he complains is a right afforded to the most “vile mass murderers and serial rapists”.
Yet, the Nugent commission has released the string of correspondence between Moyane’s lawyers and the commission, in which he is invited to respond to the allegations against him by his employees, colleagues and even some of his key allies in the institution.
Even the man dubbed “Moyane’s hitman”, Luther Lebelo, who was widely expected to take the witness stand and somehow rescue his embattled boss by providing proof of the alleged “rogue unit”, effectively threw Moyane under the bus for wasting Sars and taxpayers money by paying exorbitant attorneys fees — for instance Moyane's payment of R120,000 to his lawyers to read a book for him.
Lebelo simply added to the litany of allegations against Moyane.
Moyane’s bizarre latest correspondence to Ramaphosa also accuses Nugent of a campaign to install acting commissioner Mark Kingon to the post permanently.
It is typical of Moyane — emotional, paranoid and slightly unhinged, ending with the threat of court action if Ramaphosa fires him, echoing similar threats in the bunch of letters dispatched by his legal team since his suspension.
This time Ramaphosa may just acquiesce, a move that is set to throw the battle forward to the courts and see Moyane finally having to respond under oath to the damning allegations against him.
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