The factual errors are mounting up in the haphazard reports of public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. But one such blinding faux pas in her "rogue unit" report has caught the eye of Spider Juggernath, an anti-apartheid activist and school friend of former SA Revenue Service deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay.
Two weeks ago, Mkhwebane said Pillay was appointed "while he did not possess the necessary qualifications" — even though legally, no qualification is required. She said that "Sars and Pravin Gordhan conceded that Pillay does not possess a degree qualification, nor a matric certificate". (Of course, neither Gordhan nor Sars actually said that.)
It’s a tidbit that has been jumped on by the likes of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
However, Juggernath confirms what most people already know: it’s a fiction. "I know he completed matric, I was in his class," he told the FM in a letter.
Juggernath says he can’t understand why Mkhwebane didn’t bother checking the basic facts.
"It pains us that Ivan, who has sacrificed his life, his family, his career and all benefits a normal person enjoys for the benefit of our country, should be hounded in his autumn years. In our country where so many wrongdoers are walking freely why is Ivan, who has been investigated and cleared, being so relentlessly hounded?" he asks.
Juggernath says he and Pillay met as 11-year-old boys in Merebank, Durban. They would walk from school together, and soon became close friends.
Pillay’s nine-member family lived in a small two-bedroom house. During the week, while he attended the Hillside Primary School, he would live with his married sister.
After school, the boys would play soccer in what was known as "the circle" in Arcot Place. As Juggernath tells it, Pillay was a solid defender. "He never tackled a player head-on but ran alongside the attacker waiting for a mistake, then tackling him." Other times, they’d play cricket in the road, with Pillay’s spin bowling snaring many wickets.
But Pillay did not play any organised league sport, joking that his "lack of physical prowess was due to being one of the last children" of an "already exhausted couple".
He was an avid reader and exceptionally studious — though this changed in his matric year when he became deeply politically active. It was a time in the 1960s during which the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) began to actively campaign in Merebank, mainly through local churches and the influential medical school at the Alan Taylor Residence, near the oil refinery south of Durban.
Juggernath says he, Pillay and others in the community formed their own group, based on their view that political formations should not be exclusive to a single race, and with nonracial democracy as an end-goal. They involved themselves in various acts of defiance, painting "ban apartheid" slogans at schools and burning the old flag. Pillay, as one of the architects of these activities, stayed in the background.
"Ivan always displayed a calm disposition, was never loud or discourteous and always made brilliant suggestions," says Juggernath. "He recognised the leading civic and political figures and visited them regularly."
But the struggle soon became a complete obsession for Pillay. "He was totally dedicated," says Juggernath.
Pillay was soon flagged by the apartheid security police. In 1974, four years after matriculating, he and others attended the Black People’s Convention (BPC) conference. Soon after, they attended a pro-Frelimo rally, where the much-despised police minister Jimmy Kruger had many of them arrested. After that, Kruger banned all BPC meetings.
If Mkhwebane got the very basics of Pillay’s CV wrong, imagine how solid the rest of her report must be
Pillay secretly left the country to be trained as part of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the former Soviet Union, former German Democratic Republic and Cuba. On one visit back to SA, Pillay recruited Juggernath.
But the ANC decided that because Juggernath was politically exposed, he should rather play a role in mobilising community groups. Elected to the Natal Indian Congress executive, he was declared "enemy of the state" # 7465.
It was a dangerous time. One of their close childhood friends, Krishna Rabilal, became the first Indian member of Umkhonto we Sizwe to be murdered outside the country by apartheid forces. He and 14 others were killed in the Matola massacre of January 1981 in Mozambique.
Juggernath says Pillay remains humble to this day. "He won’t openly contradict you if you are wrong, unless it is a matter of principle. He does not like the limelight," he says.
During the struggle, Pillay racked up impressive credentials. He was a member of the central committee of the SA Communist Party, project manager of Operation Vula reporting directly to ANC president Oliver Tambo, and after the advent of democracy he helped amalgamate the intelligence services to create the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and SA Secret Service. In 1999 he joined Sars.
Now, Pillay isn’t taking Mkhwebane’s bungled report lightly. Last week he filed an affidavit supporting public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan in his review application of her report, taking issue with her "findings" — not least of which is that he helped set up a "rogue unit" at Sars.
Pillay accused her of "manifest bias, capriciousness and irrationality". He pointed out that he had matriculated in 1970.
"Whatever the public protector may have had in her mind when she so cavalierly misrepresented my qualifications in her report, it does her no credit," he says.
Which is perhaps the gentlest way of describing her hatchet job. If Mkhwebane got the very basics of Pillay’s CV wrong, imagine how solid the rest of her report must be.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.