South Africa needs radical emergency surgery

Those who have read Jacques Pauw's depressing and troubling The President's Keepers will be familiar with the name of Jonas Makwakwa.

The South African Revenue Service executive was suspended for a year after the Financial Intelligence Centre told SARS commissioner Tom Moyane about suspicious cash deposits into his bank accounts.

On Wednesday Makwakwa returned to his post as chief officer: business and individual tax after SARS said an investigation had cleared him. He may well be innocent, but since his name appears throughout Pauw's book - which describes how allegations of wrongdoing against leaders of our "gangster republic" are routinely swept under the carpet - SARS should forgive the sceptics.

Moyane himself is so central to Pauw's narrative that two chapters are named in his honour (though "honour" isn't a quality Pauw attributes to him). They describe how he rapidly dismantled the SARS of Pravin Gordhan, turning an institution that consistently over-delivered into one now lost in a R51-billion black hole.

"By adopting a strategy of wild allegations, media leaks and subterfuge, Moyane eradicated the most effective law-enforcement unit in the country," Pauw writes. Makwakwa, by the way, is Moyane's right-hand man.

The overwhelming message of Pauw's book, others like it, and the leaked Gupta e-mails, is that functional institutions have been systematically destroyed in the eight-and-a- half years since Jacob Zuma became president.

His successor will inherit a country that is flat-lining. Forget about radical transformation; South Africa needs radical emergency surgery. It will come with severe pain and a recovery period which will have us living on a knife-edge for years - if we're lucky.

The last time South Africa was brought to its knees by evil men, we had Nelson Mandela to get us back on our feet. This time?