In a bid to raise funds for the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, President Cyril Ramaphosa this morning teed off at the annual Presidential Golf Challenge (PGC).

The PGC was held at the Atlantic Beach Golf Estate, Melkbosstrand, following the President’s State of the Nation Address on Thursday night.

According to the Presidency, the funds will be used by the foundation’s partner, the Adopt-A-School Foundation, to construct ablution facilities as part of the Department of Basic Education’s SAFE Initiative, which stands for Sanitation Appropriate for Education.

‘This is an important investment in the dignity of learners and staff at schools and a contribution to social infrastructure in the country.

‘The President is honoured that his playing partner this year is 14-year-old Botshepehi Phakoe of Mangaung in the Free State. Botshepehi is one of the best young players in the Free State Junior Union,’ the Presidency said.

Load shedding

Answering questions from the media on load shedding on the side lines of th
e golf challenge, President Ramaphosa said government cannot give an exact date on when the rolling power outages will stop.

‘It is a constant problem for South Africans. We know that and everybody feels it. And it’s not comfortable at all. In fact, it does sometimes evoke a lot of anger. But as I’ve said, we do have the resilience as South Africans to keep on ensuring that we do hope for a better time. And a better time is coming.

‘The issue of the ending of load shedding is a moot one. Everybody wants to know…when is it ending. When you give them a date and there’s load shedding thereafter, they say you were lying and you make empty, false promises. So we are not going to do that because this is a process.

‘Through the National Electricity Crisis Committee, everything is put in place. All the pillars are put in place to finally address load shedding. It would be wonderful and ideal to give a date but processes like these that are engineering based…you cannot really put a date to,’ he said.

SARS

Respond
ing to questions on the extension of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) boss, Commissioner Edward Kieswetter’s tenure, President Ramaphosa batted away any suggestions of a crisis at the revenue collector’s office.

He explained that with Kieswetter’s term coming to an end, measures need to be put in place to facilitate a ‘proper transition’.

‘So there’s no crisis. Nobody should be in any form of angst because the process is being handled very, very properly. And I’m happy to have a Commissioner of Revenue like him who is very cooperative; who is committed to his work; who is diligent and who has revived SARS from the grips of state capture.

‘So when I was talking about revamping our institutions last night [at the State of the Nation Address], I highlighted that SARS is one of those. It is back to its old, efficient self having been taken into the depths of state capture for a while.

‘We have reclaimed it and I’m rather glad that it is one of those institutions that is serving the people of South Afr
ica well,’ President Ramaphosa said.

Earlier this week, the President agreed to extend the Commissioner’s tenure beyond the end of his term at the revenue collector.

The Commissioner’s contract of employment was set to end on 30 April, where after a new Commissioner would be appointed.

In March 2019, President Ramaphosa appointed Kieswetter, in terms of Section 6 of the South African Revenue Service Act, for a five-year term that started on 1 May 2019.

Source: South African Government News Agency