Every time I read an affidavit deposed by Tom Moyane outlining his reasons to get his job back, I choke.
Moyane appears to have graduated summa cum laude from the Zuma-Gupta Institute of Lower Learning.
Moyane took a functioning and world-class tax-collecting institute, Sars, and gutted it. He gave a somewhat incoherent IT chief officer an alleged 42% increase. The same person made a fool of herself in an SABC interview. At the Nugent commission, the judge was beside himself trying to make sense of her testimony.
Moyane allegedly favoured cigarette smugglers. He gave generous VAT refunds to friends and family. By withholding legitimate VAT refunds, Moyane destroyed the livelihoods of many businesspeople.
At the Zuma-Gupta Institute, ethics and ethos are not taught. Higher marks are given to students who know how to defraud a state-owned enterprise and redirect the money to individuals like the Guptas. The course is called state capture 101. Moyane has a steep hill to climb to convince a court of his bona fides.
So far, his actions at Sars have been deemed to be despicable and destructive, to paraphrase some of the findings of the Nugent commission report on Sars. - Paks Pakiriy, Durban North
BIND PARTIES TO RESPECT JOURNALISTS
As someone who has been working in the media and communication industry for the past 22 years, I am deeply worried by the attacks on journalists. There is a poisonous and dangerous undertone that needs to be stopped before it is too late.
Attacks on the character and the motives of journalists are not something we see only in SA. Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi lost his life after criticising the Saudi state. Four members of the editorial team at the Capital Gazette in the US were shot dead in their newsroom, allegedly by a lone gunman who had a grudge against their reporting. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that 52 journalists died in the line of duty this year.
Journalists aren't perfect. We make mistakes, we are only human. That is why there are checks and balances built into the work we do and that is why there are rights of recourse for anyone who feels aggrieved. Denigrating journalists as "enemies" is not the answer. We cannot accept a situation where direct or even tacit threats to the fourth estate become normal.
As we get ready for national and provincial polls next year, I urge your readers to call on the Independent Electoral Commission to make respect for journalists and the crucial work we do a part of the oath that all political parties must sign. Language and behaviour that incite violence or aim to intimidate journalists must stop.
Journalism is not a crime. Open season on the fourth estate is closed. - Martin Slabbert, Cape Town
CYRIL JUST AN ANC CAPTIVE
After almost 25 years of general ANC misrule and endemic corruption, it boggles the mind that there are still those who, in their support of President Ramaphosa, have the temerity to argue that an increased majority for the ANC at next year's election will be the saving of SA.
Their view of the abysmal political reality under ANC rule has become blinkered and their thinking befuddled. Can't they see that Ramaphosa is the ANC?
In the 2004 elections the ANC, under Mbeki, obtained a near 70% of the votes. Mbeki was untouchable, or so it seemed. In 2007, the ANC dumped him in favour of Jacob Zuma. With most of Zuma's cronies still in place, and an ANC national general council at the end of 2019, why should we expect a stronger ANC under Ramaphosa to behave any differently? For Ramaphosa, it will be payback time at the NGC. He will be expected to have delivered substantially on expropriation without compensation and National Health Insurance, to mention only two of a host of costly and hugely unaffordable imperatives.
The outcome of the "long game" Ramaphosa is playing will be determined not by Ramaphosa, but by ANC structures. - Vic Winterbach, Pietermaritzburg
GUILLOTINE ON GREENMARKET SQUARE?
Have you noticed how many of our so-called enlightened talk-show hosts have difficulty with the pronoun? It is never "some" white people but always the collective noun "whites". Ramaphosa has upped the ante with "lackadaisical whites".
Generalisations are sloppy and dangerous. Transpose Andile Mngxitama's latest vitriol and the tumbrils would be clattering over Greenmarket Square's cobbles, with waiting onlookers not knitting but embroidering BLF T-shirts.
Can somebody also remind them that the "WMC" mantra was nothing more than brainwashing by Bell Pottinger, on whose head the axe did fall. Perhaps another commission of inquiry is in order. - Polly Saul, Simon's Town..