Cyril takes stand on Sars
DEAR President Ramaphosa,
Congratulations on your decisive move to suspend Sars commissioner Tom Moyane.
The capture of Sars and the National Treasury was pivotal to the broader ambitions of total state capture by the main role players, with Zuma at the top.
On the flip side, it was extremely deleterious to all of the efforts at inculcating tax morality and tax compliance in our society. After all, which honest taxpayer could countenance the industrial scale looting of state resources as we were witnessing on a daily basis.
For patient South Africa, it has been a long, drawn-out 42 months with Moyane at the helm of Sars. What you did came not a moment too soon.
One swallow, however, does not a summer make. The Hawks must immediately start an investigation into the malfeasance that had incubated and hatched at Sars in the last threeand-a-half years under the protective wings of the corrupt Zuma presidency. This is your opportunity to show an undisguised iron fist.
Money, Mr President, is what makes the crooked world go round. Corruption at Sars allowed the looters to fly high to Dubai. You owe it to us as taxpayers to expose the full extent of the rot.
It is common cause that society will agree with you that under Moyane, “a deterioration in public confidence in the institution” had occurred and public finances were indeed seriously compromised. That is taken for granted. What we need to know is the extent of the rot.
The illegal and benevolent manner in which Moyane handled the Makwakwa matter, as well as his alleged fast tracking of a R70 million VAT repayment to the Guptas in transgression of the law, require immediate forensic and police investigation.
We need to see both disciplinary action as well as prosecution in court. All the Zuma “skelms” need to be hauled to court as quickly as possible.
Mr President, you will be alive to the fact that your administration is seeking to squeeze taxpayers harder than ever before to fill the hole that your predecessor and Tom Moyane, among others, created.
The least we can ask is to see that those who wilfully and arrogantly transgressed the law at Sars are brought very swiftly to justice. FAROUK CASSIM (COPE) Milnerton