Former minister of finance, Nhlanhla Nene, said on Monday that the finances of the country were in safe hands when the former public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan served as the commissioner of the SA Revenue Service (Sars).
Nene was speaking at Gordhan’s memorial service held by Sars in Pretoria.
Gordhan was Sars commissioner between 1999 and 2009.
Following the previous tenure of Trevor Manuel as finance minister, Tito Mboweni as the former Governor of the SA Reserve Bank (SARB), and Gordhan at Sars; Nene suggested they were a triple threat under the National Treasury.
Nene said during his time as MP and member of the portfolio committee of finance, these three men made a formidable team.
“When I joined the second National Assembly in 1999 as an MP, that is where I had a close encounter with ‘PG’ (Pravin Gordhan) as the commissioner of Sars in my role as member of the portfolio committee of finance. It was in this space that I felt the finances of our country were in safe hands with comrade PG at Sars, comrade Manuel as Minister of Finance and Governor Tito Mboweni at the Reserve Bank. Together, they made a formidable team,” said Nene.
Recalling he struggled adjusting to his new role in the committee, Nene said Gordhan understood that his fellow comrades needed to triangulate information.
Gordhan formed strategies and policies in the committee and Sars where he would be held accountable.
“He (Gordhan) introduced something, where he would engage with us before the meeting. That was somebody who wanted to subject himself to accountability, he facilitated a process that actually held him accountable,” Nene said.
Nene said Gordhan had the mannerism of a teacher, an activist who stood firmly against corruption. He told guests to carry PG’s baton of anti-corruption and ethical leadership.
“I learnt in PG’s leadership (as former deputy minister of finance) he was meticulous in the manner he approached things, I don’t think he slept. He was a teacher, an activist, and too many people have been buried in Pravin. This is the time to practise and emulate PG, to make sure the fight he fought against corruption and all sorts of malfeasance are now ours to take forward,” Nene said.
Former National Treasury director-general, Maria Ramos, said PG’s tenacious and dedicated spirit built and transformed Sars shortly after he joined.
Ramos noted Gordhan was at the helm of ethical leadership. He was able to transform Sars to a high standard of new technologies and policies.
“Pravin was a part of this courageous leadership. Him joining Sars to lead it to that first phase of construction (from 1999) was a privilege, a master-stroke. The transformation of Sars was huge and challenging, he understood from the very beginning that Sars’s transformation was complex and multidimensional. Organisationally, it required a radical overhaul of technologies and systems,” she said.
Although Gordhan’s death was welcomed with backlash of him having defunct SOEs, Ramos credited him for building a world class institution in the midst of internal challenges at Sars.
“The internal challenges were huge; it is hard to comprehend today the scale of challenge and the change it was required. Technology, where it existed in the newly established Sars and may I say the Department of Finance then, itself undergoing a huge transformation to become the National Treasury, was archaic. For the first few years (at Sars), our focus was improving on tax administration on building systems and institutions,” Ramos said.
Other key speakers included Manuel, who hailed Gordhan for his commitment towards the betterment of South Africans.
The Star