Bain denies not telling all on Sars

US-based consultancy Bain & Co has denied former partner Athol Williams’s allegation that it has not been forthcoming in disclosing its role in the harm inflicted by SA Revenue Service (Sars) management battles.

US-based consultancy Bain & Co has denied former partner Athol Williams’s allegation that it has not been forthcoming in disclosing its role in the harm inflicted during SA Revenue Service (Sars) management battles.

It reiterated that in its work at Sars it had no intention to weaken the tax agency, despite the finding of the Nugent commission of inquiry that Bain colluded with former commissioner Tom Moyane to do so.

Williams, a University of Cape Town lecturer, resigned publicly at a finance conference in Sandton last Thursday, citing lack of transparency from Bain as it deals with the reputational damage arising from its work at the revenue agency.

Bain said on Monday that Williams made his intentions to leave the firm known in August, saying he needed to focus on his PhD studies and lecturing work. “We have conducted a thorough investigation into all aspects of our engagement with Sars. This investigation, which is now complete, did not find any evidence that Bain was involved in any scheme with Mr Moyane to damage Sars or that Bain withheld relevant evidence of any kind,” it said in a statement.

“We disagree with any assertion that the firm has not disclosed its full role in the events that transpired at Sars.”

Bain said it reaffirmed its commitment to co-operate fully in any investigation in July. While it made mistakes, it had “no motive, monetary or otherwise, to damage Sars”.

After Jacob Zuma’s presidency, Bain became one of the highest-profile faces of alleged state capture together with McKinsey and KPMG. The company, one of the world’s top three consultancies, is accused of weakening Sars so that it missed its revenue targets, contributing to SA’s first VAT increase in a decade.

The consultancy had brought in Williams and retired deputy chair of Anglo American SA Norman Mbazima to oversee the implementation of remedial action after the Sars debacle.

The Nugent commission’s report of 2018 found there were two corruption schemes at Sars of which Bain was part.

The smaller scheme was Bain irregularly getting the tender to restructure the tax agency. And the bigger scheme “can be described as a premeditated offensive against Sars, strategised by the local office of Bain & Co, located in Boston, for Mr Moyane to seize Sars”, the commission found.

WE DISAGREE WITH ANY ASSERTION THE FIRM DID NOT DISCLOSE ITS FULL ROLE IN EVENTS THAT TRANSPIRED AT SARS

We have been reminded once again that our betters are not better after all. Last week, we learned that poet and philosopher Athol Williams, who was recruited by consultancy Bain to help restore a reputation damaged by its role in undermining the SA Revenue Service (Sars), resigned in August, only three months after taking the job. He says Bain would not answer his questions about its role at Sars and he believed it knew more than it was saying.

This further dents Bain’s image because it questions whether the company is serious when it says it regrets the damage it caused at Sars. It might also reduce the credibility of other international consultancy and auditing firms that aided state capture here, such as KPMG and McKinsey. It should also challenge some stereotypes many South Africans carry in their heads.

Here, and no doubt elsewhere in Africa too, these international firms are seen as more than successful businesses. They are, literally, white knights — bearers of Western excellence that show the rest of the world how things are done. This belief is not restricted to people who hanker for the days when people outside the West “knew their place”. It was common in government, at least in the years immediately after 1994.

For example, an international auditing firm was hired to frame youth policy for provincial governments. Its report confirmed the obvious — that auditors don’t make good public policy specialists. But the choice summed up the trend; because these companies came from the West and were rich, they must know everything. This paves the way for a new colonisation

— in which the masters are armed not by troops, but by flow charts and an assumed knowledge of everything. It went without saying that these firms were also models of honesty that could teach morally flawed Africans how to behave.

We already knew before Williams resigned that all this was a myth — as are all other claims that some people are superior to others because they come from particular parts of the world. Iconic names in the global marketplace turn out to be hired guns, available to do anything for a price. There is no evidence that Bain, KPMG and McKinsey helped the architects of state capture do what they were doing any better. But they imported an air of credibility and expertise into their attempts to turn the public purse into their piggy bank. (At Bell Pottinger, members of the English elite seized on antiwhite rhetoric to make a quick pound, but public relations companies are not role models, even if lords own them.)

Now, according to Williams, it seems that at least one of these companies is not serious when it says it wants to tell all and start afresh. The lesson should be obvious: brand-name consultants from the West can be every bit as grubby and unreliable as the Africans and Indians who are routinely blamed for state capture. Like the original colonisers, the new corporate variety is good at greed. But this is no qualification for teaching others how to run companies or countries. They are not role models and the claim that they add more value to our societies than consultants from here — or from elsewhere in Africa, Asia or Latin America

— is deeply suspect. This is another example of our need to get rid of stereotypes that tell us real integrity and expertise lie elsewhere and that our organisations and the country will succeed only if we learn from those who know better.

If this country’s experience with state capture teaches it to judge advice on its merits, not on where it comes from, it will have done some good among the damage.

THE RESIGNATION QUESTIONS WHETHER BAIN IS SERIOUS SAYING IT REGRETS THE DAMAGE IT CAUSED AT SARS

● Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.