For two years, I temped at SARS. One signs away the right to divulge anything about SARS at start of contract, so what follows confines me to personal memories: SARS-wise, nothing to see here. Mr Kieswetter, my ultimate boss in Megawatt Park, strolled into memory triggered by a news article about his contract ending soon.
I do not know what fuelled Mr Kieswetter’s hunch, but he pegged me as a decent and trustworthy enough man to ferry his family vehicle to Cape Town. He himself did not want the drive. He wanted to fly, but wanted his own car during his vacation. He supplied petrol money, and consented to me sharing the driving with a few others.
When I picked the car up from Mr Kieswetter, I met his family. I got a great welcome, with a special hello from his son Matheu, who knew about my time in the African Jazz Pioneers, and who himself was a trumpeter and aspirant orchestra conductor. Matheu and I were in touch for a time via social media. In time he realised his dream to conduct symphony orchestral music.
If there is one thing we have leared since 1994, it is that the ANC is not big on foresight, save for when it turns its mind to funding voracious party coffers. I even heard an insider say
“corruption is bad, but it’s ok if you give the money to the party”.
This planning paralysis, at the end of the ANC’s Western Cape “moment”, may have affected Cape Town bizfolk at large, or maybe Cape Town is just quite simply, as per its nickname Slaapstad, a dozy city. Rob Hersov commented recently on a Biznews meeting in Hermanus, starting fully attended at 07h00, that Capetonians would about be getting out of bed at that hour.
On that road trip, we found out just how sleepy, not long after passing Bloemfontein, around Reddersburg. There, we ran into densely backed up traffic, both lanes and the shoulder. We could not see the cause.
Traffic toward Jhb was similarly sparse, and occasionally endangered by the usual yahoo drivers who detested our stupiditiy in being such goody-two-shoes moegoes that we stuck to our side of the highway. We learned from a passing car that most towns between there and Cape Town had run out of petrol. We ourselves were running low, and this was bad news, because Mr K's sturdy MPV seemed as thirsty as an Irish playwright. The queue we were in was caused by people backed up for petrol in Colesberg, where, we were assured, there was still petrol. We had refuelled in Kroonstad, and planned to refuel in Colesberg, at the furthest stretch of the vehicle's generous tank. Would there still be petrol, after a 200 km double queue of cars had slaked their thirst. We doubted it.
I am an old gigster and roadie. Having done gigs all over the country for decades, many on back roads, and since we were within a kilometer of the Reddersburg overpass,I directed my co-driver to cross the grass verge, turn back, and take the exit ramp for Reddersburg.
“Are you sure?” chorused everyone in the car.
I was. He did that, and a few minutes later we refuelled in Reddersburg. We then used the old road through Trompsburg and Philippolis to jump the queue to Colesberg, where the old road rejoins the N1 near the old showgrounds. Looking back as we climbed the Colesberg koppies, we could see the flash and wink of windscreens in the sun, all the way back to the horizon and beyond the Shell Ultra stop.
With a lot of petrol in our tank, we took a chance, passed the deserted petrol stations with “No petrol” signs at Hanover, but were able to refuel in Richmond. It’s a long hop to Beaufort West, but we got lucky at Nelspoort. We didn’t at Beaufort West, but the word there was that tankers were plying reliably up the N1 from Cape Town, and the scare was off if we could make it to Touws River. We did. It was a tired and tense crew that delivered Eddie’s car to his family in Bothasig.
We had a great time in Cape Town and made our own way back in time. It transpired that Cape Town bizfolk knew two things full well: that
it was likely to host half a million or more visitors over the Christmas holidays
South Africans, growing wealthier by the day (those were the days) had bought a million new cars during that year, mostly in Gauteng. which they also knew full well empties itself into the Cape on the Season of Migration to the South (nothing to do with this author: his book of that title was insightful on a black middle class.
Still, it never occurred to the oil men to lay in more petrol than usual for December and they were caught napping. They recovered very quickly: the shortages were a thing of the past within a few days.
Not long after my time at SARS ended, Mr Kieswetter moved on to the private sector. The talk was that he had been offered the post of Commissioner to replace Pravin Gordhan, but declined.
I was puzzled, Did Mr Kieswetter see it as a party political appointment? He was known for impartiality: a civil servant before all else. I was left wondering. SARS was soon to be turned upside down in Zuma’s time, with bizarre stories of rogue units, all untrue. The Sunday Times was forced to publicly retract and apologise in print. I have no doubt that EK, a man with much more foresight than Western Cape petrol fatcats, foresaw the coming trouble.
Mr Kieswetter’s crystal ball was clearly in good order. Some years later, with JZ out of the picture, he returned, as Commissioner. I was not surprised. Nobody who knew him could think of a better man for the job. At 66 now, and given his record in turning SARS around since state capture years, nobody would be surprised if he took on another contract. He is a very young 66.
Yet, at least one podcaster is saying he declined an offer. Maybe his crystal ball is working for him again, plus I am beset with the notion that the extra money he requested for AI tax collection strategies at budget time was thrust on him, that it was yet another cover for party funds. We will never know.
I would not want to be in the job with our looming poor prospects for tax collection. Or, am I reading things that aren’t there? He is quite the family man, and he has earned a good and happy retirement. I am betting that, like me, he feels his greatest achievement is his family, and they will be the compass.
In the late sixties, a Canadian colleague, Ray Romanik (I wonder where he is now) told me that every earner in Canada equally paid $1k per annum tax. Googling did not confirm that. It is arithmetiacally fair, but no unskilled worker will think it is fair to pay ten percent of his imcome when the ‘rich Jaspers’ are paying a hundredth of a percent of theirs.
Mr Kieswetter, and revenue professionals everywhere, must ceaselessly debate the cost and fairness of collecting tax, among multiples of other considerations, If they don’t, who does? Google Gemini lists many entities that do, but not one of them includes individual tax payers. Democratic involvement in tax does not get a mention. To paraphrase a popular phrase in movies:
Q: How did that work out for us, then?
A: Not well.
Personally, I tire of these debates. Nobody wants to crack their heads, nor even to be involved, and so it is left to specialists beancounters. Duh. Across the world, nearly every country battles with the bitter, hard fact that the One Percent have snaffled our money. Meaning, tax systems generally fail. Now, I do not mean that they fail to collect. Quite the opposite. It means simply that a centralised (read Federal) collection system can ever be considered democratic. To rephrase that:
Nobody votes FOR tax.
Not in any shape nor form do we vote for taxes, let alone increasing them. But most of us submit to paying them, because we are civilised, and want things that pooling money delivers: schools, roads, hospitals. Not arms. Does anybody (outide of the US) vote for arms? Maybe Israel? It’s fair to say that tax is not, and probably never will be, democratic. If we survey a group of people in Diepsloot and a group in Sandton CBD, there is no way either will vote for tax in the same style, or amount, or even vote for tax at all.
This criterion tops the debate. I think that is a great pity, because it is concerned only with quantity: cheaper is simply better. I don’t agree. Cheaper is simply nastier. The better debate is about a ratio:
against
That way, in tax terms, we begin to approach the notion of quality.
In SA, collecting tax costs 0.7c per Rand, less than one cent per Rand. I don’t see protest marches about that, so can we assume that we are happy with it? It sounds pretty cheap. but it is a whole different debate against what we get for what we pay, per Rand.
Tax reminds me of the pleasant patter of a Nationwide airline captain, as we soared over the Drakensberg 20 minutes after leaving Durban:
Life is what you make it. And if you don’t make it, that’s life.