Pravin Gordhan was jealous of me, says Tom Moyane

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan made it his “life mission” to get rid of suspended SA Revenue Service commissioner Tom Moyane because he was jealous of his success, according to Moyane.

“It would seem that one of Gordhan’s life missions was to take off from where he had left off in March 2017 and to get rid of me, by hook or by crook, and harassing me away from occupying the position of SARS commissioner,” he says.

This is one of many arguments made by Moyane in a 700-page application filed before the Constitutional Court on Monday, in which he is challenging the legality of two inquiries into his fitness to hold office.

Other arguments by Moyane include that Gordhan during a “hurtful” incident at a meeting “refused to shake my hand” and triumphantly told Moyane: “I’m back!”

This went against the values of ubuntu, says Moyane, who is also upset that Gordhan called him “cheeky”.

He says in the papers that Gordhan targeted him out of “envy and downright jealousy” because his tenure at the tax authority was “the most successful in the democratic era”.

Gordhan is the main witness in the misconduct inquiry and was also a key witness in the inquiry into tax administration, chaired by judge Robert Nugent, who has written to Moyane’s lawyers indicating he would recommend to Ramaphosa that he be fired “in the interest of SARS and the country”.

Moyane has also accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of violating his oath of office in his treatment of him.

According to Moyane, Ramaphosa unlawfully abdicated his powers to make the case for his removal from office to Gordhan.

Gordhan earlier said that, as the former minister of finance, he has personal knowledge of the facts in relation to the charges against Moyane.

Moyane says further that Gordhan wrongly believes he was the source of the “rogue unit” revelations, that ultimately led to Gordhan facing an aborted fraud case.

“Gordhan and the other members of the rogue unit, like Ivan Pillay, Adrian Lackay and Johan van Loggerenberg, to this day, believe that I was the force behind the allegations against them concerning the rogue unit as part of some political agenda,” he says in the affidavit.

Moyane spends a considerable amount of time in his application detailing his various confrontations with Gordhan, which he says became increasingly hostile after former president Jacob Zuma reappointed him as finance minister to replace Des van Rooyen.

“Literally, within hours of his appointment, Gordhan rushed to SARS and, quite unprovoked, refused to shake my hand in the presence of, and to which no objection was forthcoming from, the then deputy minister, Mcebisi Jonas, as I respectfully greeted him upon their arrival at SARS. Above all, this was a violation of the value of ubuntu, as well as the common rules of decency and/or professionalism.”

He adds later that during this same meeting, Gordhan “full of triumph ... said to me: ‘I am back, you never thought I would be back’.

“I felt insulted and my dignity degraded as a very senior leader of a significant institution,” he says.

“Nobody had ever humiliated me like that in front of my subordinates before. No minister and no president.”

Moyane argues that Gordhan is too conflicted to be his primary accuser in the misconduct hearing, which is due to start this week.

Moyane has given the Constitutional Court a telephone recording of Gordhan admonishing him after SARS released a statement saying it had “lost all confidence [in] and respect” for judge Dennis Davis.

Davis, a renowned judicial authority on tax law and adviser to the finance minister, publicly questioned SARS’ operational capabilities in 2017.

Moyane states that , during that call, Gordhan “falsely accused me of being disrespectful towards him and being ‘cheeky’, [of] thinking I was, inter alios, God, attacking ‘judges’, being connected to the leadership of the Hawks and the NPA, needing to ‘grow up’, which comment he found to be disrespectful when it was redirected back to him”.

Moyane denies any suggestion that his leadership was responsible for the collapse of SARS and insists that “by any lawful measure or standard, my tenure at SARS was the most successful in the democratic era”.

“For example, I was the first and only commissioner of SARS in the history of the institution to reach the psychological important revenue milestone of R1-trillion and to break that hitherto elusive barrier three times in a row.”

In his disciplinary hearing, Moyane has been charged over his alleged mishandling of a Financial Intelligence Centre report on his former second-incommand, Jonas Makwakwa, and other issues.

But he maintains that he did nothing illegal and can prove that all these charges are baseless.