Having only arrived at the SA Revenue Service (Sars) on July 3, 2017, a member of the executive committee did not take long to add the name of the suspended commissioner Tom Moyane, to the list of three people she did not get along with.
Mogola Makola is the first to confess she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Very early upon her arrival she was warned to “stop being so outspoken”.
A qualified lawyer with degrees from Rhodes and Wits, she is very articulate and it would clearly take a lot to silence her: “I’ve been extremely vocal. I haven’t been able to watch my mouth.”
She told the Nugent Commission probing tax administration and governance at Sars on Thursday, she was aware of the festering culture of fear that permeated the tax collector when she arrived to take a position as chief of enforcement.
The commission told her the atmosphere of fear was a strategy by Moyane.
Makola did not object to the view.
She said she did not know why the executive committee did not probe the reasons behind the staff’s morbid fear of their seniors during Moyane’s tenure. “We didn’t; I don’t know why.”
Commission chair, retired Judge Robert Nugent cited an example to illustrate the fear among staffers at Sars: “We have people who don’t want to be seen here.
“There’s a woman who pretended she was going to the doctor.
“She came in through the back door.”
“I have an open-door policy,”Makola said.
“She said: ‘I took matters up for even people who did not work in my unit’.
“I haven’t been here long enough to go to every office (to help those in fear).”
But she has assured the afflicted members of staff that, “if you do everything by the book, I will go to war with you”.
“If you do things by the Act, I will back you.
“We are an institution of statute,” she said.
Advocate Vuyo Kahla, one of Nugent’s assessors, asked if as leaders of the organisation, the executive committee discussed this fear.
Makola said: “It has been discussed. I don’t know if there is a desire to do something about it.”
Yet she confessed: “I don’t think we did.”
Was exco functional during the time of Moyane, Kahla asked?
“From where I was standing, we could have done better.”
Were exco aware of the fear by the rest of the staff, she was probed further?
“I can’t speak for other people. I started being very careful with other people. I couldn’t trust everyone. I knew about the fear because people came to speak to me about it.
“I was afraid to even elevate this to the commissioner. I’d seen how he reacted to points I raised with him.
“People were generally afraid. If I raise it, how do I know they’d not be victimised afterwards? There’s fear of victimisation.”
It was put to Makola that “some people are still fearful of exco members”.
Some people, she was told, were not willing to testify.
“I don’t know which members they are afraid of.
“But it is a perception we need to take on board and deal with.
“I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. But we need to address this perception.
“Exco should take it as valid criticism if we are feared by juniors.”
We need to interact with them in a less fearsome manner, Makola said.
She pointed out in her testimony that she could not stomach Moyane and two other senior executives Jonas Makwakwa and Refiloe Mokoena.
“I had several meetings with the commissioner. The Commissioner and I were not very close. I just got the sense, I wasn’t his kind of person,” she said. When she went to Moyane, at one point in tears, to complain about the meddling of, chiefly, Makwakwa, Makola said her gripes remained unresolved.
“None to my satisfaction. The outcome was always that we have to be collegial. I made it very clear that I was feeling undermined by some of my colleagues,” she said.
Makwakwa meddled in a matter with a taxpayer who owned Sars R54million.
She went to the commissioner to complain about Makwakwa’s meeting with the taxpayer without her present as chief of enforcement. Or anyone in her office being invited to the meeting.
“We weren’t even aware there was a meeting. I just happened to walk into the boardroom because I thought I was due to meet with other people there. I recognised the taxpayer.
“None of the people directly involved with the taxpayer were part of the meeting,” Mokola said.