The tense stand-off between Pravin Gordhan and Advocate Dali Mpofu continued at the state capture commission on Tuesday in the second round of the public enterprise minister’s cross examination.
The cross examination was so intense that at some point deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo who is chairing the commission ordered Mpofu to sit down after he interjected during a re-examination by Gordhan's lawyer Michelle Le Roux and told her to “shut up”.
Mpofu was questioning Gordhan on behalf of his client, former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane, who the public enterprises minister implicated in allegations of state capture when he gave evidence to the commission in November 2018.
Mpofu first cross-examined Gordhan late last year which he continued on Tuesday evening.
Mpofu accused Gordhan of having a “propensity” to make “scandalous” and “vexatious” comments about people that were not grounded in evidence.
He used two judgments delivered in December last year in public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane's reports in which she made findings against Gordhan. He and his co-applicants challenged the reports which related to activities at Sars, which were reviewed and set aside.
While two full benches for the most ruled in Gordhan's favour, some of his comments were struck from the the record. These formed the basis of some of Mpofu's questions in which he set up the parallels between the comments the minister made about and allegedly to Moyane to prove that he made comments without having evidence to back it up and was condescending.
“These judgments seem to confirm that it's your propensity to insult people in a vitriolic, scandalous manner without evidence and (...) to be condescending towards them,” Mpofu said.
Gordhan denied “emphatically” and “vehemently” he had a propensity to do that.
While he pointed out that the court also made scathing comments about Mkhwebane in the judgments which reviewed and set aside the two reports, Mpofu merely said that it was only Gordhan who was being cross-examined and not Mkhwebane.
“You are the only one that (is) accused here of bandying about accusations and insults without evidence,” Mpofu said.
Gordhan was finance minister during some of Moyane’s tenure as commissioner of the revenue service. Moyane was fired following a recommendation by the Nugent commission of inquiry which probed the decimation of the tax collecting agency under his leadership.
Mpofu asked whether he had laid criminal charges against Moyane given that he had accused him of state capture. Gordhan said that he had not, but added that he believed state capture was broader than mere criminality. He said it was also about hollowing out an institution of senior and most capable people, and breaking down parts of that institution, among others.
Judge Robert Nugent, who chaired the probe into Sars, found that Moyane was largely responsible for ruining the tax agency. Nugent found that Moyane lacked integrity and colluded with the consultancy Bain to implement a restructuring that severely weakened Sars.
Governance failures during Moyane’s reign were partly credited for the revenue shortfalls that saw a VAT increase in 2018 for the first time in more than two decades.
Gordhan took exception to Mpofu saying he was involved in illegal activities as well as that he didn't want his integrity attacked and to be insulted.
“Ask the question and you will get an answer,” Gordhan said.
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