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National Treasury and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan equate an effort by the Hawks to destabilise it ahead of the tabling of this week’s budget speech as a second attempted coup on the powerhouse department.
The first attempt, they believe, was in December, when ministers were dramatically reshuffled, said Treasury officials.
City Press has interviewed four sources in Treasury who characterise the events there as an attempted takeover by “shadow forces”. They agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
One said: “The real battle in South Africa is to retain our sovereignty and defend our institutions. To ensure they are professionally run in the public interest.”
Gordhan’s conflict with Sars commissioner Tom Moyane exploded into a national crisis on Friday as the governing ANC, the churches and the presidency went into unprecedented damage control.
They threw up a wall of unity behind National Treasury and behind Budget 2016 as it stared down the Hawks probe.
City Press has established that Gordhan did not threaten to resign over the letter sent to him by the Hawks, or over Moyane’s continued tenure at Sars, despite reports this week that he did.
However, Gordhan did reiterate with political leaders across ANC party and parliamentary structures that the current tax boss would be redeployed. Gordhan also warned of a second agenda at play in several institutions, government sources told City Press this week.
Gordhan’s confidants say he is too seasoned a politician to threaten to resign or to have set conditions for his reappointment in December, when the economy tanked after the shock removal of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister.
“By then, the difficulties [with Moyane] were well known,” said one treasury source, “and thus there was an unspoken expectation that Moyane would be moved.”
The enmity between Gordhan and Moyane is infamous.
Two senior Sars officials told City Press that when Gordhan arrived unannounced at the Sars headquarters the day after his reappointment as finance minister, he refused to shake Moyane’s hand when he met him in the parking lot.
The officials said Gordhan had tried to phone Moyane, but Moyane had ignored his call, and in the parking lot, Gordhan demanded to know why and Moyane said he was “busy”.
Treasury officials say that without a good relationship, tax morality and compliance is compromised. Already, the budget reflected revenues that did not hit anticipated targets because of declining growth; and there are fears that Sars has already been too destabilised to secure the collections that underpin the promises Gordhan made this week.
The commissioner of Sars is appointed by the president, but is managed by the finance minister in terms of a recent law change to protect taxpayer information.
Before the law was amended, the commissioner was appointed by the minister. Although 104 candidates applied for the post when former Sars commissioner Oupa Magashula resigned, Zuma deployed Moyane to the job when Nene was finance minister.
The questions from the Hawks emanate from an investigation into a spy unit that Moyane has pursued doggedly.
“In our view, this is a well-calculated destabilisation plan,” the ANC said about a set of questions that were sent to Gordhan a week before the budget was released.
On Friday, Gordhan said: “There is a group of people that are not interested in the economic stability of this country and the welfare of its people.
“It seems they are interested in disrupting institutions and destroying reputations.”
Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, who was briefed on Treasury affairs last week, said yesterday: “The struggle over the use of public money we are seeing in government should not be seen simply as a factional battle within the ruling alliance.
“Our country faces a critical moral turning point: do we want a society in which the economy grows for all, creating jobs for millions of our people and spreading wealth? Or do we want a society in which a small number of politically connected families appropriate public resources for their own benefit and avoid paying tax on their earnings?”
Weeks ahead of Nene’s shock axing, friends of Zuma, whose names are known to City Press, reached out to two politicians, saying the “old man” wanted to make them finance minister.
This account was confirmed to City Press by four sources, and has informed the belief that Treasury faces a “coup”.
National Treasury is contested terrain because of its powerful Constitutional set-up. It is the only department that has an entire chapter in the Constitution dedicated to its work.
All money paid to the government goes through the national revenue fund controlled by Treasury; all money bills are similarly run. Treasury can also stop the transfer of funds to an organ of state.
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