More than just a spat between two government officials
EDITORIAL: Tom Moyane doesn’t deserve sympathy
The concept of accountability, it would seem, doesn’t sit easily in Moyane’s revenue collection agency
When Tom Moyane, the increasingly paranoid SA Revenue Services (Sars) commissioner, gave an emotional press conference last week about the implosion of his relationship with finance minister Pravin Gordhan, it was hard to feel too much sympathy for him. This followed the leak of letters between him and Gordhan, over the course of a year, laying bare just how toxic the relationship had become. In the letters, Moyane claimed Gordhan “shout(s) at me in a very disrespectful and humiliating manner”, he accused the minister of “systematically orchestrating a vigorous campaign” against him and says he “will not tolerate being lectured and persecuted, as if I was a school boy”. Given his haughty and dismissive attitude to anyone questioning him, however, this seems unlikely. If anything, Moyane has created a bubble around himself that suggests he believes he is untouchable and unaccountable to anyone — be it the public who pay his salary, or Gordhan. Some worrying inconsistencies in his beh...
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