EDITORIAL: South Africa deserves to hear the truth about Zuma’s tax affairs
Sars flatly refuses to hand Jacob Zuma’s tax records for the years he was president to journalists, despite a watershed ruling that enables it to do so
Ten months after a watershed legal ruling that made it possible for the South African Revenue Service (Sars) to hand Jacob Zuma’s tax records for the years he was president to journalists at amaBhungane and the FM, the tax agency remains adamant it’ll do no such thing.
In May last year, in a far-reaching judgment, the Constitutional Court swept aside the notion that the Tax Administration Act imposed blanket secrecy, ruling that in certain circumstances a “public interest override” could allow tax information to be released. The court ruled that Sars must release tax information if doing so “would reveal evidence of ... a substantial contravention of, or failure to comply with, the law” and where the “public interest in the disclosure of the record clearly outweighs the harm”...
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