How does one count the cost of battered institutions, careers prematurely cut short, broken lives and a severely damaged country?
Audit firm KPMG may have promised reparations to people hurt by its discredited and withdrawn "rogue unit" report, but restoring the integrity of institutions will have to go much deeper.
That’s the view of former SA Revenue Service (Sars) deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay, who was directly affected by the capture of the tax agency — his life upturned, career ended. He weighed in this week on the issue of reparations raised by KPMG chair Wiseman Nkuhlu, welcoming the audit firm’s commitment but adding that the issue of reparations is far broader.
KPMG has promised reparations for current and former Sars employees who were purged by former commissioner Tom Moyane after the report was published.
Yet it seems nearly impossible to monetise the damage done — to individuals, institutions, their communities and the country.
Pillay says: "The damage KPMG has done set the country back by years and it will take many years to fix. Sars is still struggling and it was once world class. Many other institutions were much weaker, so the damage is even greater there," he tells the FM.
Pillay was among the former Sars officials pushed out of the institution by the now-discredited rogue unit narrative used to capture the tax agency. He was directly named in the KPMG report and, along with former head of enforcement Johann van Loggerenberg, until recently faced criminal charges over the alleged bugging of the National Prosecuting Authority offices — contained in the now-withdrawn report.
Meanwhile, frustration among current Sars employees is rising after a process was initiated and an internal draft report compiled by a committee on potential reparations and the way forward for those affected by state capture.
This internal process is in addition to the commission of inquiry into tax administration and governance at Sars chaired by retired judge Robert Nugent.
Interviews were again conducted with employees affected by the state capture era under Moyane, with many indicating that they had been "repeatedly let down by Sars", according to a draft of the report the FM has seen. It also says that many of those who were complicit in Moyane’s project remained at Sars, and employees called for them to be disciplined in order for the tax agency to "cleanse itself" and move on from its "dark past". The report recommends that there should be an apology to Sars employees affected by the rogue unit narrative and that the KPMG report and one by advocate Muzi Sikhakhane be withdrawn. Both reports fuelled the rogue unit narrative and provided the impetus for Moyane to victimise employees associated with high-risk investigations.
However, Sars insiders say little has been done to move the process forward and staff once again feel betrayed. Senior government officials say many key processes were halted by the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sars failed to respond to the FM’s questions about why it hasn’t acted on the report.
Pillay says he has not spoken to anyone about KPMG’s latest mea culpa, but met the audit firm last year. There was broad agreement on the way forward, he says, with respect to reparations.
"We said there should be an objective process, that a panel of credible persons be selected to adjudicate the claims. I have not heard from KPMG since late 2018. Given that there was little difference in the main points, what took this long? I have no idea. I don’t wish to speculate," he says. He adds that while KPMG was naturally looking at it in monetary terms, society too had to "engage with what happened".
"A key consideration is what as part of broader reparations can KPMG and the other facilitators of state capture do to rebuild our institutions and address the rebuilding of values in society.
"They must be put to work to make good the damage. Of course, as always there is a prior step, we must have the capability to manage such interventions," he says.
What the state capture era showed was that there were far too many professionals who were far too ready to compromise, to put themselves first instead of focusing on the national interest.
"When we talk about what happened, these are the kinds of things we must address. What is the national interest? Even lawyers have compromised, they are supposed to be servants of the courts.
"All these things have been lost and have to be rebuilt. Too often we say we have solutions when we don’t even know what the problem is."
Another problem was disinformation and how sections of the media were used to spread it. Then there is also the problem of "fixers" — those who sell their ability to influence people in power.
"We have to try to broaden the discussion," Pillay says. "In our communities, some see no problem in paying homage to thieving. We have to ask: how are these things resolved? To some extent the SA Council of Churches has been talking about this. That is welcome. How can we be the change that we desire? Our communities were already broken in 1994. Our task is much harder now, we are even more broken."
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