Edward Kieswetter: Making Sars immune to future misgovernance

When my long-overdue interview with Edward Kieswetter finally happens, it starts with a morning walk through the streets of one of Joburg’s affluent northern suburbs, where he lives.

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner and his team, including his protectors, are specially shod in trainers, and he is kitted out in a tracksuit to boot. I’m completely unprepared in office shoes, having not unreasonably assumed our rendezvous would involve a short stroll to our destination — his favourite breakfast restaurant. In the event, our perambulations take 30 minutes or so.

Whenever possible, he says, he starts his day with a walk. When it’s not possible, he hits a treadmill set up in his living room, while listening to an audiobook on his phone.

Our conversation delves deeper into matters of longevity and good health — and humans’ obsession with long life. We ponder which is better: a long life for its sake alone, or a shorter, but better-quality existence? This is the classic “lifespan” versus “healthspan” dichotomy. We also talk about the importance of good sleep. He mentions Peter Attia, as well as medicine 2.0 versus 3.0, and asserts that regular exercise is the sine qua non of good health.

As the pavements narrow and disappear, and then appear again, Kieswetter makes the first and only complaint of our walk: “See — this city isn’t built for walking.” Before we know it, we have reached the restaurant and settled down for our interview proper.

I don’t wine and dine with politicians, and I don’t take instructions from them. I don’t say that arrogantly — I say that as a matter of integrity and governance 

—  Edward Kieswetter, Sars commissioner

Naturally, we talk about Sars, to which he returned after 10 years, and the controversy of state capture. So why did he go back? “The whole state capture of Sars touched me deeply, because I love Sars. When the president made his thuma mina call, I said to myself, ‘If I were to put up my hand, what could I do?’ I first of all thought I could perhaps run Baragwanath (Hospital) or go into education. Then I said, ‘Hold on — Sars is broken. Maybe I could do that.’

“Then you start talking with people. You have a glass of wine with Lesetja [Kganyago, the South African Reserve Bank governor] and he says, ‘Boet, I think you must come back’. You chat with Momo [former Treasury deputy director-general Ismail Momoniat] and he says, ‘We gonna start the process to look for a new commissioner.’ You pick up stompies and you go home and wonder whether this is a ‘send-me’ moment.

“When the advert came out, I applied. I went through the process like everyone else. The panel recommended me as first candidate. Quite frankly, when they looked at the other names [on the list], it was not difficult for them to see I had the most experience — not only at Sars, but also in terms of my track record at CEO level.”

Kieswetter was previously CEO of Alex Forbes and deputy commissioner of Sars. I ask him how political the job is, given that Sars was one of the main institutions targeted during the state-capture project.

“You work in a political context, but the job is not politically driven. You are appointed by the president, but the minute you are appointed, you are guided by the law, not by politics. My work is defined in law. The [Sars Act] says Sars has been created to build an effective and efficient revenue-collection system, and the law defines the parameters of that. But the commissioner doesn’t report [to anyone], so he doesn’t have a line boss and is able to act independently.

“If there is any political interference, that would be a human choice. There’s no requirement for that. I made it very clear I would not tolerate political interference. I’d rather resign. My principals know that you don’t come and ask me to fix something for someone, or make a problem go away. It’s unfortunately what’s happened in the past, where a political office-bearer would say, ‘Come and see me’, and stuff like that. No, I don’t wine and dine with politicians, and I don’t take instructions from them. I don’t say that arrogantly — I say that as a matter of integrity and governance.”

On his return to the tax agency in 2019, Kieswetter says he was “shocked by how badly Sars was broken”. Its governance structures, meant to ensure its operational integrity, had either been removed or watered down, while the leadership had been weakened by people who had been placed in positions they were entirely unsuited for, and who were then beholden to the authorities that had appointed them. In addition, structures like the large business centre (which had offered a customised service to big-business taxpayers) and the central litigation unit had been dismantled.

“Then they began targeting people who were strong enough to resist. About 60 to 70 senior people who had deep institutional experience were marginalised. They were taken out of their jobs and given non-jobs,” he recalls. He says citizens withholding their taxes only hurts the most vulnerable, such as pensioners and young children, who depend on state support to survive.

“If you withhold your taxes, you may feel you are morally justified in breaking the law, but you have still broken the law. Therefore, you don’t have the [moral] high ground any more to speak out about crime. Yours is a white-collar crime, [but it is] no different from the poor man who breaks into a shop to steal bread because he has a hungry child. You call him a criminal? You are an even bigger criminal.”

At this point, I ask him why he controversially refuses to release former president Jacob Zuma’s tax records, which some media companies have requested access to, a dispute now before the information regulator.

He bristles at the idea he may be protecting the former president, saying, “I’m not protecting Jacob Zuma. I’m administering the law. I don’t care who it is on the other side of the matter. I don’t know Jacob Zuma, [and] I’m not his friend. He enjoys all the rights and privileges the law affords him. I, Edward Kieswetter, whether in my personal capacity or as [Sars] commissioner, have no right to treat him differently because I think he was the master architect behind state capture — or because I don’t like his politics or brand of leadership. If I had to treat people based on my personal assessment of them, I shouldn’t be in this job.

“The media has made it about Jacob Zuma, not me. I do my job without fear or favour. Taxpayer confidentiality is enshrined in law. Zuma just happens to be a beneficiary of that. The Constitutional Court has ruled [on this issue] and asked the legislature to look at the conflict between the various aspects of the law. Until then, I will apply the law to the best of my competence and knowledge, and [according] to my conscience.”

With the Zuma matter out of the way, our discussion turns to Eskom. After the country’s nightmarish period of load-shedding, there now appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The mention of his name as a possible Eskom CEO would perhaps raise the eyebrows of those not aware of Kieswetter’s successful tenure at the power utility, which he joined in the early 1990s as a training manager, rising through the ranks to eventually run a portfolio of power stations in Mpumalanga.

In addition to his Sars day job, he chairs the Eskom plant performance improvement workstream and is also a member of the presidential national energy crisis committee — both aimed at resolving the electricity crisis. He says three things have brought about the load-shedding respite: the slowdown in and reduction of demand (which worries him, because it indicates a declining economy), the installation of rooftop solar power, and improvements in plant performance. The next phase of the turnaround strategy, he says, will focus on the reliability of plants.

The successful introduction of solar, he warns, is a double-edged sword. “The longer-term price we are paying for solar is that a lot of companies, such as mines and other big energy users, will become less reliant on Eskom because they will be generating their own power. Homes will take themselves off the grid or reduce their consumption because they now have inverters, batteries and solar power.

The media has made it about Jacob Zuma, not me. I do my job without fear or favour. Taxpayer confidentiality is enshrined in law. Zuma just happens to be a beneficiary of that

“A large chunk of [them] will never go back to Eskom. That is a huge risk for Eskom’s balance sheet, because [of the loss of all] that future revenue. That loss can be compensated for by increasing electricity prices for those consumers who stay on the grid. The bad news is that many of the consumers who stay on the grid will be poor people, because they cannot take themselves off the grid,” says Kieswetter. The only way to deal with that challenge is to subsidise electricity, which will be a burden on the public purse. Eskom, he argues, has to be completely reconfigured to make baseload electricity both reliable and affordable.

So, having worked as a lecturer, a power station head, a financial services executive, and now the country’s top taxman, how would he describe himself? “In a word, Edward Kieswetter is a teacher. I’ll end my life as a teacher and a mentor.” Indeed, he is now a visiting professor at several universities.

And would he ever consider going into retirement? “There’s no such thing as retirement,” he says. “Retirement, in my dad’s world, was that you stopped working and drew a pension. I don’t think that concept exists today, because to live is to have focus. And if your work is an endeavour that gives expression to your purpose, then if you stop working, in a sense you stop living.

“I will never retire, though I might change what I do and the reason I do it. Today, I’m fortunate to be financially secure. I work because it gives expression to my life’s purpose — making a difference.”

Born in Maitland, Cape Town, 65 years ago, Kieswetter credits his labourer father and seamstress mother as being the people who had the greatest impact on his outlook on life.

His staff hovering not-so-discreetly in the background is a reminder Kieswetter needs to be taken to his next engagement (to which he will drive, not walk, this time), I ask him if Sars is now fixed? He answers half-philosophically and half matter-of-factly. “We have substantively addressed the recommendations in the Nugent report [which dealt with governance failures at the agency]. But fixing [Sars] is not a project — it’s a process. We have closed a lot of the holes and fixed a lot of the cracks. But the job of rebuilding it into a smart, modern Sars will take time and [require] significant investment,” he says.

Alluding to the rule of his predecessor, Tom Moyane, Kieswetter says Sars needs to be strengthened “so that in future it’s less vulnerable to a person who comes with the power and authority of commissioner”.

Likening the misgovernance and corruption that took hold at Sars to a virus, he says, “You can’t kill the virus, but you can make the environment [one where] it cannot thrive. Evil is in all our genes, and corruption is always present. We need to strengthen the immunity of the organisation to [stop] the virus from thriving. You can never stop strengthening the immunity.”