Mkhwebane uses ‘Zuma tweets’
No confirmation yet from former president that he had authored posts on tax information
Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has used tweets allegedly posted by former president Jacob Zuma to bolster her disputed claim for access to Zuma’s tax records.
Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has used tweets allegedly posted by former president Jacob Zuma to bolster her disputed claim for access to Zuma’s tax records.
Mkhwebane is looking for Zuma’s tax information as part of her investigation into an ethics complaint laid by former DA leader Mmusi Maimane, who asked for an investigation into allegations that Zuma received payments from a security company in the first months of his presidency.
The SA Revenue Service (Sars) maintains the Tax Administration Act does not allow it to disclose a taxpayer’s information, except to a limited number of public bodies of which the protector’s office is not one.
When she approached Sars for the former president’s tax records, Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter turned her down, saying it was against the law to do so.
As the tax records tiff continued, Zuma allegedly tweeted that he had no problem with the public protector accessing his records. But, as yet, Zuma has not provided Mkhwebane with a sworn statement confirming that he has, in fact, given his consent for her to get the records.
Kieswetter then approached the high court in Pretoria and requested it to order that Sars officials are permitted to withhold taxpayer information, specifically that which is “provided by a taxpayer or obtained by the tax agency in respect of the taxpayer, including biometric information” from the public protector.
Kieswetter says he was forced to take Mkhwebane to court after she threatened criminal charges and contempt of proceedings against him personally if he did not hand over Zuma’s tax information. He maintains this threat is “prima facie unlawful and it threatens Sars stability and undermines effective revenue collection in the national interest”.
The public protector who is likely to face a parliamentary inquiry into her fitness to hold office in the coming months has used a legal opinion provided to her by Zuma’s advocate Muzi Sikhakhane to argue that her office does have the legal power to subpoena taxpayer information.
She has referred the court to a series of tweets posted by Zuma’s Twitter account earlier in December, in response to Kieswetter’s confirmation of Business Day reports that he had gone to court to urgently block the implementation of Mkhwebane’s October 21 subpoena for Zuma’s tax records.
Those tweets included a post in which Zuma’s Twitter account stated: “I hear that my Sars records are being contested in court by Kieswetter. No-one has consulted me about this matter ... It must be known that I have nothing to hide. If the [protector] wants to see my Sars records she is free to do so. We should not make the job of the PP difficult. If she wants my records, she must have them.”
Mkhwebane appears to believe the tweets were authored by Zuma, because she has included copies of them in her response to Kieswetter’s application. She told the high court that in the event that “the authenticity of authorship of the messages may be disputed [by Kieswetter], further efforts to obtain the confirmatory affidavit will be pursued”.
However, she has admitted that it had been “logistically difficult” for her lawyers to obtain an affidavit from Zuma confirming that he was the author of the tweets she now wants to use to vindicate her claim for his tax information.
Zuma’s lawyers have not responded to requests for confirmation that he did, in fact, author the tweets in question.