Pravin Gordhan wants his taxes paid on time, but he's not nearly as keen to discuss the other side of the coin.

I've been meaning to make this post for some time, especially after watching Pravin on GMSA the day after his medium term budget speech. After the opening salvo about fiscal strain and constraints on budget income, Vuyo tried to draw Pravin on the expense side of the budget. You might recall ministerial car costs were making the headlines at the time.

Pravin would not be drawn and went on a tirade about unpaid taxes (particularly VAT). At the time I had two government departments at 90 days overdue and was about to pull the plug on the contracts. No thanks to those jokers taking their sweet time I was taking some pain paying my VAT, thank you very much.

They've paid since but the thought remained - this is a two way street.

What jogged me into raising it now was this story:
South Africa's Land Claims Commission owes over R10 billion rand to beneficiaries and landowners for land it bought to give to blacks, the Business Day newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The commission, tasked with restoring to blacks land that was taken from them during apartheid, could not afford to pay about R8.8 billion in grants for post-settlement support to beneficiaries of the land restitution programme, the paper said.

The commission was also unable to pay R1.19 billion for land it bought because of a shortage of funds, while some land owners had gone to court to get the commission to pay R380 million for land it purchased from them, the Business Day said citing the commission's legal head, Thami Mdlalose.
full story from Business Report here
Some poor bastard who owes me money (small stuff fortunately) signed off on his land claim nearly 3 years ago - still hasn't got his money and (surprise) is too broke to pay his bills.

Is this heading towards a vicious cycle?