SARS opens its doors to Deaf tax consultants as minister warns lagging departments will be named

The South African Revenue Service has launched a programme that puts Deaf South Africans into the revenue service as service consultants, with the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities using the occasion to warn that departments falling behind on disability employment targets will be named.

Sindisiwe Lydia Chikunga was the keynote speaker at the official launch of the SARS Deaf Accessibility and Cohort Programme, held under the theme “Every Hand has a Voice. Shaping an Inclusive Future” at the Linton Auditorium at SARS’s The Bridge offices. She congratulated the revenue service on what she called a comprehensive, organisation-wide approach to disability inclusion, built around employment, skills development, accessible communication and institutional capability.

The programme, as the minister described it, brings together a revenue authority and a specialist Deaf education organisation, eDeaf, to develop a cohort of Deaf service consultants, with SARS’s most senior leadership committed to the work. Chikunga said the presence of the SARS Executive Committee, directors and heads in the auditorium, and the rest of the leadership joining virtually, spoke to the importance the organisation attaches to disability inclusion.

She placed the launch inside Disability Rights Awareness Month, which runs from 3 November to 3 December, the International Day for Persons with Disability. This year’s theme is “Creating Strategic Multi-Sectoral Partnerships for a Disability-Inclusive Society.” Chikunga said her department has advocated for 3 December to be part of the National Assembly agenda through a national debate taking stock of the country’s progress in building an inclusive society.

The minister used the platform to press the wider public service on numbers. She said the National Development Plan sets a 7% employment equity target for persons with disabilities to be met by 2030, that Cabinet has approved an annual increase of one percentage point in representation that all government departments and private-sector organisations must implement, and that the target for the 2026/27 financial year is 5%.

Her own department, she said, is at 5.56%. She said the Department of Public Service and Administration issued a circular at her department’s request directing every department to adhere to the annual target, and that her department circulated a practice note on the same. Cabinet has also made the appointment of persons with disabilities to the boards of state-owned entities mandatory.

“Across the public service, we can no longer plead with our colleagues,” Chikunga said. “Those who continue to pay lip service to employment equity will be named, and they will be shamed.”

She said her department is working with organisations of persons with disabilities to compile a database of persons with disabilities from which departments and public entities can recruit to meet the minimum target, and invited SARS to join that effort on the strength of its experience with the Deaf cohort.

Chikunga also put three partnership proposals to the revenue service. The first is a dedicated employment stream for persons with disabilities, scaling what SARS has built through the cohort programme. The second is her legacy initiative to pair every special school in South Africa with a state-owned enterprise able to support both educational and infrastructural needs, drawing in the chief executives of state-owned enterprises, Sector Education and Training Authorities and industry associations to commit a share of corporate social investment budgets. She acknowledged that SARS is not strictly a state-owned enterprise in the conventional sense but said it carries significant convening power across the public finance ecosystem.

The third concerns Supported Employment Enterprises, state-owned companies that employ persons with disabilities. Chikunga said her department, through the Department of Labour and Employment, has advocated for an exemption for these companies, and asked government departments at all levels, the private sector and society to buy goods and services from them.

Much of the address dealt with the school system that produces the candidates SARS is now hiring. Chikunga said the greatest barriers facing learners with disabilities lie not in their bodies or minds but in the design of schools, systems and curricula, and in attitudes, and that these barriers are especially acute in resource-constrained townships, rural areas and farming communities. She described special schools in buildings that remain inaccessible, classrooms without ramps, corridors too narrow for wheelchairs and toilets children with mobility needs cannot use.

“If a child cannot enter a classroom with dignity, inclusion has failed before the lesson begins,” she said.

She pointed to gaps in assistive devices, contrasting a learner with low vision in an affluent suburb who may have a tablet with accessible learning software with a learner in a rural community who may wait months for a Braille textbook or rely on photocopied materials. For Deaf learners, she said, the gaps may include the absence of qualified South African Sign Language teachers, interpreters during examinations and visual learning materials. She said research findings show many teachers have not received adequate preparation for inclusive classrooms, which she described as a systemic gap in teacher training rather than a personal fault.

On technology, Chikunga named automated captioning, sign language recognition, speech-to-text and tactile reading among tools that can tailor learning to learners with disabilities, and warned that without deliberate investment in devices, connectivity and teacher training for special and universal schools, the benefits risk remaining available only to the wealthy. She said SARS, with its technological capabilities, has an important contribution to make there.

She grounded the obligations in law and treaty: the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996, which she said guarantees equality before the law in section 9 and the right to basic education in section 29, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, domesticated through a Cabinet-approved White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Continental African Disability Protocol championed by the African Union.

She closed by declaring the SARS Deaf and Accessibility Programme officially launched.

The address was published by the South African Government (www.gov.za) at https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/minister-sindisiwe-chikunga-sars-deaf-accessibility-and-cohort-programme-06-nov-2026. The document is the prepared text of the minister’s keynote, and it does not state how many Deaf consultants the cohort comprises, what posts they will hold or when they start.