Untangling the helix
One of the reasons any arrest of Pravin Gordhan over a “rogue unit” at the SA Revenue Service (Sars) seems far-fetched is that there’s no clarity on whether there ever was such an illegal intelligence unit.
According to some, the Sars unit was a legitimate tool to investigate tax dodgers; to others, it went too far. It’s a murky debate, even before the facts emerge about what Gordhan actually knew about it.
The Hawks are understood to be particularly interested in a project known as “Operation Sunday Evenings”, in which the unit planted bugging devices in the offices of the National Prosecuting Authority in 2007.
KPMG said this was at the request of senior prosecutor Gerrie Nel, during the case against former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi.
Two Sars officials, Helgaard Lombard and Johan de Waal, who have been suspended for more than a year, have been fingered for involvement in this project and were asked by Sars to co-operate with the Hawks probe.
But it isn’t clear whether Operation Sunday Evenings was sanctioned by Sars’ leadership or whether Lombard and De Waal were moonlighting along with then unit head Andries Janse van Rensburg. Hawks investigators are believed to have leant on those two officials to testify against Gordhan in exchange for “indemnity”. This strategy has rung alarm bells for others who say they were also ousted from law-enforcement agencies and stateowned companies.
Suspended Independent Police Investigative Directorate head Robert McBride, former Hawks boss Anwa Dramat and former Sars deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay have said as much in what is clearly the beginning of a “fight back” campaign.
Others claim they are also victims, including Gauteng Hawks boss Shadrack Sibiya, his KwaZulu Natal counterpart Johan Booysen and former National Prosecuting Authority head Mxolisi Nxasana.
Last week, McBride, Dramat and Pillay released a statement saying corruption was at the heart of the attempts to capture key state institutions. They said there was a “convergence” of the cases these institutions were working on, which they believed was at the root of their removal.
These cases, it seems, all trace back to Zuma’s “engine-room” — people he or his family surrounded themselves with in the years after he ousted Thabo Mbeki. the law. Others in the Zuma camp say it’s about more than Gordhan: that it’s time treasury was “reined in”. This group believes that even though he left almost a decade ago, former minister Trevor Manuel still exerts a strong influence on the institution.
This nexus of influence, they add, is what prevents the ANC from achieving the “radical economic transformation” promised at its Mangaung conference in 2012.
The Guptas borrowed heavily from this thinking at their presentation to the ANC, arguing that there is truth in the rantings of “project spiderweb” — that treasury is controlled by powerful individuals led by Remgro boss Johann Rupert.
“Project spiderweb”, of course, is nothing more than cooky conspiracy theory.
On a list leaked to journalists last week, Manuel, as the former finance minister, was also earmarked for arrest. Manuel is unfazed, cheekily commenting that the constitutional court judgment on Nkandla showed “we live in a constitutional democracy” and “even they have to follow process simply because citizens have rights”.
Cut through the noise, and it seems that treasury is the clear target.
Gordhan has been repeatedly undermined by Zuma when it comes to SA’s flailing state-owned enterprises — such as SA Airways and Denel as well as Sars.
Even though Gordhan asked Sars commissioner Tom Moyane to halt his “restructuring” at the tax institution, Moyane has powered ahead and has almost completed it.