ANC challenges banks’ ‘monopolistic behaviour’
• Cwele says corporatised Postbank would help change the status quo
The ANC’s call for the fundamental transformation of the financial sector was not meant to collapse the banking system but to change “monopolistic behaviour”, Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele said in Parliament on Wednesday.
Speaking during the debate on President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address, Cwele said there was a need to review the financial sector charter in relation to access to finance for small and informal businesses as well as financial inclusion, affordability and bank charges.
The ANC had been calling for the opening up of space for a variety of sector-specific banks or second-tier banks such as a construction bank, stokvels, co-operative banks and state banks to improve access and affordability to support inclusive growth, he said.
Zuma’s address to Parliament last week largely focused on “radical economic transformation” including changing patterns of ownership.
During Friday’s TNA business breakfast, sponsored by Gupta-owned newspaper The New Age, the president raised concern about the “monopoly” held by SA’s four big banks and said more banks were needed so that economic transformation could take place.
“We actually frustrate our economy deliberately by making only a few people control the economy,” Zuma said.
“At the heart of the economy is finance… If the [major] banks that dominate everything are just four … in all countries where the economy is developing, the banks are all over because it is the finances that make the economy grow. We want to change this … the time has come. We should be able to deal with the economy at a fair level,” he said.
The top four banks are Absa, Standard Bank, First National Bank and Nedbank. In 2016, Zuma criticised the banks after they ceased doing business with the Gupta-owned Oakbay group amid allegations that the family was using its relationship with the president to secure business and other favours.
Cwele said on Wednesday that the “urgent” need to corporatise Postbank would help change the status quo in the sector. Postbank “is a state bank which seeks to promote the universal access to banking, while at the same time providing a platform for the disbursement of various state transactions such as social grants”.
The Reserve Bank approved the South African Post Office’s application to establish a bank in July 2016.
Cwele said the Postbank’s company registration was being finalised. Six people had been approved and were available to be appointed as members of the Postbank board after undergoing a “fit and proper assessment” by the Reserve Bank.
“The financial risk modelling and capital adequacy of the Postbank have been finalised. The bank is well capitalised. The final and difficult hurdle we are currently addressing in consultation with the minister of finance and subsequently the Cabinet is the resolution of challenges around the Postbank controlling company.”
DA MP Geordin Hill-Lewis said the truth was “radical economic transformation is a code word for radical corruption”.
He said: “The ANC has long abandoned the idea of real broad-based empowerment, if they ever believed in it at all. Empowerment — ANC style — is empowerment for billionaires and millionaires and scraps for the rest.”
Another DA MP, Solly Malatsi, said the ANC continuously failed the people of SA.
“We live in the era of false prophets and pastors .... One of those false prophets was on this podium last week Thursday, preaching the gospel of deception,” said Malatsi.