A FAMOUS GROUSE

FAREWELL then, Pravin Gordhan, the beleaguered tax man who enjoyed a turn in the spotlight as an unlikely hero in the fight against state capture.

A darling of the intelligentsia, he was, for example, the star attraction at the 2016 Open Book Festival in Cape Town. In normal circumstances, such attention would have baffled festival audiences; Gordhan, after all, was not a “literary” figure. He was not an author and, as far as we were aware, had no such aspirations. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Booksellers and educators, however, would perhaps have wanted to grill the finance minister, as Gordhan was at the time, about value-added tax on books. That, certainly, would have been a fitting line of inquiry at such a festival. 

It was Gordhan’s predecessor, Trevor Manuel, who alas had decided that books were luxury items and must be treated as such; scrapping VAT would only benefit publishers and distributors and the elite in the leafier suburbs who, like, actually buy and read books. Abolishing the tax, activists claimed, would have improved the country’s literacy rate and maybe opened a few tiny minds.

But circumstances were not normal in the Jacob Zuma era. So, along with many others, I duly took my seat in the Fugard Theatre to watch journalist Justice Malala interview Gordhan about his work in the Treasury and, more importantly, his boss’s relationship with the Guptas.

“Like I said in Parliament,” Gordhan told Malala, “it is strange that this set of characters seem to have such a unique presence in our society. There are lots of media allegations. What we do need in SA is to recognise that economic systems produce a rent-seeking phenomenon in some sort of other.

“Clearly, in our society you get hardworking, honest people and then you have people who benefit unfairly. Some people in Parliament want public funds to benefit 55 million people not just 5 million.”

Judging by the obituaries and tributes, Gordhan was one of these rare hardworking, honest people. Much of the writing has been hagiographic, purple and paean-ful (if I may be permitted a terrible pun), with much emphasis on his “selfless service”, “ethical leadership” and dedication to “economic justice”. 

There was this, for instance, on Gordhan’s tenure as revenue service commissioner, a leadership role he “most savoured” and where he “honed many of the leadership traits” that would characterise his political life:

“He transformed SARS by elevating its staff’s purpose from collecting taxes to building a country. He walked the offices and turned SARS around from a paper-based and bureaucratic institution into the modern, tax collecting machine it is today. The institution was so well respected that Gordhan was head of the World Customs Union for six years from 2000. Gordhan and his team drove up collections, enabling a golden era for South Africa’s fiscus when Trevor Manuel was finance minister. Together, they enabled South Africa’s first (and only) budget surplus.”

Note the mention that he “walked the offices”. This is presumably to dispel the notion that Gordhan somehow levitated on the job, a Buddha-like figure floating among the bean counters on a cloud of financial rigour if not outright sanctimony.

Be that as it may, he was deemed a worthy successor to Manuel. We know this because Zuma fired him for attempting to block the Guptas’ brazen looting of public funds. It was apparent, even to the most casual of observers, that he had been treading on the right sort of toes.

His successor, Nhlanhla Nene, was soon axed to make way for the disastrous Des “Weekend Special” van Rooyen. The economy nosedived and, as a result, uBaba was compelled to reappoint Gordhan as finance minister while the hapless and hopeless Van Rooyen was handed the innocuous and foolproof cooperative governance and traditional affairs portfolio.

Much to the displeasure of those at the Saxonwold Shebeen, Gordhan did not keep quiet during this turbulent period. Driven by near reckless fury, he went after the thieving and corrupt much like Captain Ahab hunting Moby-Dick. 

Using insider knowledge, for example, he was able to grill Eskom board members about crooked coal contracts and bluntly informed the late Lynne Brown, then public enterprises minister, that her denials of complicity were simply not plausible.

His campaign in this regard reached an apogee of sorts at the Zondo commission of inquiry in 2018, when he placed Convict Number One at the centre of the state capture project, a criminal venture that had cost the country upwards of R500 billion.

He made bitter enemies of his supposed comrades. One of these was the irredeemably inept public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. In her attempt to discredit Gordhan, she turned to the rubbished SARS “rogue unit” narrative. This fanciful nonsense about covert agents spying on taxpayers, cooked up by the Sunday Times, formed the basis of a report in which Mkhwebane recommended that Gordhan be “disciplined”.

The Gauteng high court overturned her report, finding it the product of “a wholly irrational process, bereft of any sound legal or factual basis”. Mkwhebane’s “investigation” was built on lies; the court ruled that she had ignored evidence and dismissed facts in a determined attempt to reach her adverse findings.

Former social development minister and ANC Women’s League president Bathabile “Party Animal” Dlamini was another Zuma loyalist who attacked Gordhan after he had criticised her negligence in handling social grants. In a near incoherent rant on Twitter, she labelled him an “imbecile” and a “rumor-mongerer” (sic) who had “weaponised all justice and security apparatus to erase the history of South Africa”. (There is a well-founded suggestion that strong drink may have played a part in the drafting of that post.)

Gordhan’s foes, the journalist Jacques Pauw has pointed out, were not necessarily political allies but were united in their loathing of the man due to their well-founded fear that an empowered revenue service “might expose their nefarious activities that include money laundering, tax evasion and smuggling”.

They included, among others, EFF leader Julius Malema, former EFF deputy and now MK Party “organiser” Floyd Shivambu, the lawyers Dali Mpofu and Muzi Sikhakhane, former Pretoria News editor Piet Rampedi, former Free State premier Ace Magashule and his cabal of supporters, as well as numerous trolls and bots on social media.

One appalling consequence of their activity is the rise in bigotry directed against Indian South Africans. It was Malema who, in his denunciation of the Guptas, notoriously told a press conference in February 2016: “We are not going to allow SA to be sold over a plate of curry.” It is sadly ironic that this same slur has been directed at Gordhan.

Tasteless

What is it with curry and the witless? According to the author and social critic Sarah Britten, there are sadly occasions when the dish is not just a plate of food. Commenting on Juju’s jibe, she wrote:

“Having published three collections of South African insults, I’m very aware of our recent history of anti-Indian slurs. Coming from such a powerful figure, someone who is set to influence South African politics for many years to come, this is not an anodyne comment about catering. ‘Curry’ is a metonym for an entire set of cultural practices, associations, assumptions and prejudices. What Julius Malema says matters. And what he gets away with saying matters even more.”

Such racism is not confined to South African politics. Laura Loomer, the far-right American conspiracy theorist who peddled the fiction that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in the Ohio town of Springfield, has claimed that if Kamala Harris was elected US president, the White House “will smell like curry” and her speeches would be facilitated by a call centre.

Not long now, I suppose, and the plaintive bleat “But I actually enjoy curry…” will be up there with “Some of my best friends are…” as a red flag for intolerance and prejudice.

Bringing up the rear

Here he comes, much like a rat actually boarding a sinking ship. Yes, it’s my old friend, the boulevardier Carl Niehaus. A class of his own, he has now belatedly joined the anti-Gordhan fray with this ungracious spew on X (formerly Twitter):

“Let me say this on the Sunday, when some people like to ‘preach’: This thing that it is supposed to be 'ubuntu' to say nice things about an evil man, such #PravinGordhan, just because he finally kicked the bucket, is a selfserving blackmail trip that I am not prepared to fall for. Gordhan was uSatane incarnated, and the People's Advocate, @AdvDali_Mpofu, properly exposed him for the bastard he was.” (sic)

Carl, now an EFF MP, then doubled down with this post, which is just as (sic):

“I honestly don’t care what my enemies have to say about me. They have done their damnest now while I am still alive, and I am still standing. They can say whatever they want when I eventually die, I honestly don’t care. What irritates me much more are those hypocrites who, sweet as if sugar can’t melt in tbeir mouths, come and say nice nothings at one’s funeral, while in real life they were Judasses, who stabbed you in the back. Honestly, if one of those bastards, who have betrayed me, come and speak false praises about me at my funeral, I will get out of the coffin and bliksem them!”

Here at the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”) we very much doubt there’ll be any need for such dramatics. Rest assured, Carl, there won’t be many false praises at your graveside.