Johannesburg - President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to crack the whip on all those who were responsible for the corruption and fraud in the South African Revenue Services and the criminal justice system.
Ramaphosa made the pledge during his party’s - the ANC conversation with the electorate during an event held at the Atterbury Theatre in Lynnwood, Pretoria on Monday night.
Prior to his address, Ramaphosa’s audience wanted to know what he was going to do about the revelation of corruption and fraud heard at the hearings of inquiry probing state capture and led by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. Others were concerned about government slow delivery in service delivery and lack of effective government intervention in the allocation of business opportunities particularly for disadvantaged black people.
In his reply, Ramaphosa told his audience that he got his mandate to do away with all the ills at the ANC Nasrec elective conference where he was elected to become the party’s president.
He said the elective conference in December 2017 gave him a mandate to deal with corruption and fraud after the ANC former secretary general Gwede Mantashe gave a political report which outlined the extent of corruption and how it weakened the state and its institutions.
“At the elective conference. I was given three mandates. To go out and renew the ANC. We were given a mandate to embark on the renewal of the ANC. The same mandate also meant that we should renew South Africa by dealing with corruption.
“We were given the mandate to renew and to do it visibly,” Ramaphosa said.
He said that was among the reasons he appointed the Zondo Commission to probe state capture and the Nugent Commission to investigate Sars as well as the Mokgoro Inquiry to conduct investigations into the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
“State institutions were targeted to be weakened such as the criminal justice system. Sars was destroyed with a big hammer. Some of its highly skilled left the revenue authority,” Ramaphosa said.
He said his plans to return Sars to its former glory including other institutions saying his mission was to ensure efficient and effective government under his helm.
Ramaphosa also made a pledge to ensure that racial divisions in the country become a thing of the past.