‘Please forgive me’
SPEAKING from his hospital bed where he is being treated for high blood pressure, a distraught Oupa Magashula told the Sunday Times yesterday: “I have the highest regard for the South African Revenue Service. I have seen the minister and I said to him, ‘Please forgive me.’
“I had an inappropriate conversation with that Mrs [Nosipho] Mba. It was really banter.
“There was no intention to subvert the recruitment processes of SARS. You know that I resigned because I care deeply about SARS. I have worked so hard and I have
spent seven and a half years of my life in this institution. They deserve better than this.”
He said he had not exerted any “implicit pressure” by forwarding Mba’s CV to his internal audit section.
“I receive a lot of CVs and I meet a lot of people. Some of the best people we have in SARS, and here I include myself, my CV was forwarded in 2006 directly to Pravin Gordhan. That does not imply anything. The minister himself said he is recruiting accountants.
“This lady is a chartered accountant with six years’ experience . . . she worked for KPMG and she should have competed favourably with other [applicants].
“This banter that I had with this lady is not the level and standard they expect at SARS, and for that I apologise. And I apologised personally to the minister and I fell on my sword for that one.”
Magashula, who apologised for speaking softly “because he is on medication”, sounded remorseful, saying: “This is extremely damaging. I honestly thought that I’m doing the honourable thing by walking away and saving the organisation that I so much love and the people that I worked so well with, and we have done incredible things together and this is taken completely in the wrong context.
“We are accountable and we must do the right thing to protect the reputation of SARS. Do you understand why SARS is so important? I honestly thought I should resign to save this institution from any reputational damage. I enjoyed working with the minister of finance. I think we have done great things — also in government. I especially don’t want to diminish the reputation of SARS.
“I have not subverted processes in SARS and I have not committed any crime or any corruption. I have not favoured or disfavoured any taxpayer.
“I didn’t know that the guy had any previous convictions for drug dealing. I just treated him like any other guy who wants to ingratiate himself with the commissioner of SARS. And, as a polite civil servant, I treat everybody very politely. Maybe I am very naive and maybe I was a bit careless . . . and, of course, because I didn’t want to bring the reputation of such an awesome organisation into disrepute, I resigned.” — Stephan Hofstatter