Zuma says Nugent had no authority to recommend Moyane's removal

Fired Sars commissioner Tom Moyane. Photo: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)

Fired Sars commissioner Tom Moyane. Photo: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Nov 20, 2018

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Johannesburg - Former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane is hoping that Jacob Zuma’s affidavit questioning to validity of the Nugent commission will assist him in his bid to overturn President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to fire him from his job.

Zuma in his affidavit said: “In response to a question pertinently put to me, I wish also to confirm that in taking the decision to institute the Sars commission, which president Ramaphosa duly implemented, it was never my intention or within my contemplation that the Sars commission would ever: issue interim recommendations before gathering all the evidence; and/or deal with the employment contracts of individual employees, especially where such contracts were already the specific focus of a separate presidentially initiated process.”

On Tuesday, Moyane’s instructing attorney Eric Mabuza told the media outside the High Court in Joburg, that the former president had filed an affidavit in the Constitutional Court on Monday in support of Moyane’s application to set aside disciplinary charges against him.

Mabuza said Zuma’s affidavit emphatically stated that he conceptualised the commission of inquiry into Sars but said it was not his view that such a commission must ‘make interim report and to investigate human resources and employment issues” at Sars.

“Zuma said the Sars commission of inquiry has deviated from its intended purposes. We had that Mr Zuma’s affidavit will assist the court (ConCourt) to arrive at a just decision,” Mabuza said.

Moyane lodged an application in the ConCourt soon after Judge Nugent rejected his bid to stall the hearings on governance and administration at Sars which initially began in June this year. He also lodged a legal challenge against the disciplinary hearings chaired Adv Azhar Bham.

Earlier this month, Ramaphosa endorsed Nugent’s recommendation to fire Moyane.

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