EDITORIAL: A Soviet-style SARS brag fest
The effort by the tax office's current leadership to airbrush out successful predecessors, including Pravin Gordhan, is an outrage
This newspaper wishes most of the 14,000 people who work at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) a happy 20th anniversary. But not all of them. The Soviet-style efforts of SARS’s current leadership to airbrush out those who set up the new institution two decades ago, and transformed tax collecting in SA, is an outrage. The people who work at SARS do not deserve a leadership team that is so petty and pathetic that it felt the need to rewrite history in the media release and self-congratulatory media adverts it placed for this week’s 20th anniversary. There was no mention of Pravin Gordhan, nor for that matter of former commissioner Oupa Magashula or acting commissioner Ivan Pillay. Lest anyone had forgotten, it was Gordhan who led SARS from its inception until he was appointed finance minister in 2009. It was Gordhan and his team of dedicated professionals who fundamentally changed the culture of paying tax in SA during that period. The huge turnaround in SARS’s efficiency and se...
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