(Reuters)
THE FIFTH COLUMN
So Tom Moyane, the suspended head of the South African Revenue Service (Sars), went into battle early this past week. He got his advocate, Dali Mpofu (who moonlights as an Economic Freedom Fighters ideologue), to tell the Nugent commission investigating the disarray at Sars on Moyane’s watch that it was biased against him (as was the disciplinary hearing into his conduct).
Moyane stayed away from the commission, so he said he hadn’t been given a chance to defend himself against claims that he was a despot and nearly ruined Sars. Hence, argued Mpofu (if “argued” is not too strong), the whole commission should be dissolved and all the evidence so far deposed should be expunged. Or was it “extirpated”?
At any rate, such unwavering courage, such a refusal to give an inch, should be a lesson to us all. Few of us have the guts displayed by, for instance, Moyane’s mentor, former president Jacob Zuma, who said he’s not afraid of going to jail, even though he’s clearly doing his damnedest (as he has since about 2005) to stay out of it.
He’s no doubt doing that because, if he went to jail, he would be failing his many followers in the funeral business, as well as giving up his struggle to split the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, which of course he is doing for the greater good of South Africans of all skin colours and levels of poverty.
In that fighting spirit, I have written my own letter to Sars, which has been persecuting me by demanding money all the time:
Dear Sars
It is obvious that you are biased against me and therefore should be dissolved. Sars should be prevented by law (or, failing that, presidential decree) from any further demands made on my shrinking purse.
The mere fact that Sars is demanding money from me shows how biased it is (just like the City of Johannesburg, Egoli Gas, City Power and Edgars clothing store). Clearly Sars has lost its moral compass. It has probably been infiltrated by agents of a hostile foreign regime and/or former cadres of Operation Vula. The known rogue unit at Sars, so courageously confronted by Mr Moyane, is still there — and it’s looking at me in a biased kind of way.
mine the source of this unwarranted prejudice against me. Until this is determined, I will noSars takes summary judgment against me — and on what basis? Just because I earn a salary, it demands that I give it money. And, moreover, I have to fill out all sorts of irksome forms, pay money to tax consultants to make sure I have filled the forms out correctly, as well as pay an IT expert to try to make the transition to e-filing (which didn’t work, again a sign of Sars’s bias). I demand that the Mdluli Detachment of National Intelligence, the State Security Agency and the Nando’s-eating Big Spy Unit or whatever it’s called, start bugging Sars immediately to detert be paying any taxes, or filling in any of those darn forms.
Yours unfaithfully,
Shaun “Tom Cat” de Waal