Straight talking Cyril opens up on land, VBS and VAT hike

President broadcasts his views in TV interview

President Cyril Ramaphosa has described people who were at the helm of VBS Mutual Bank when money was looted at the bank as scoundrels and thieves.

Ramaphosa said this in a wide-ranging interview on eNCA last night, where he also weighed in on the land and value added tax debates.

“For starters, those who are responsible [for looting VBS] must be dealt with in terms of our law,” said Ramaphosa.

He added that the news about fraud and corruption angered him.

“We would like to save VBS… because it has a good brand name and it’s served the people of Limpopo very well,” the president said.

“It lost its way because there were people who had every intent in going to raid the money of the bank and taking money from the poorest of the poor, even taking money from municipalities… that has to be followed up and there has to be accountability there.”

VBS was placed under curatorship in March after it experienced cashflow problems.

The curator later discovered that the bank was mismanaged and was littered with fraudulent transactions.

“It’s money that was stolen from our people and maybe we should now stop using euphemisms and call these people thieves,” Ramaphosa said.

“They are thieves, they are robbers and scoundrels because these are people who took money from ordinary grandmothers who kept money in there for their life savings as well as their burials.”

Responding to a question on how he felt about the negative impact the fuel price increase and recent increase of VAT from 14% to 15% was having on the general populace, Ramaphosa said raising the tax was necessary.

“The [increase of] VAT we could not avoid because it’s the end of the year and there was

‘ ‘ [VBS] lost its way because people had intent to raid money

[a] decision that we should fund students in higher education and we decided that we are going to follow through with that, we are going to make money available,” he said.

“But when we looked at the kitty, the kitty didn’t have enough money and these are working class children who needed to be funded, these are children from poor families and in the end an act of solidarity had to kick in.”

Responding to a question on whether that would not amount to the poor subsidising the poor, Ramaphosa said the poor should derive solace from the fact that their children would be able to get a decent education “so that they can care precisely for those families”.

Ramaphosa said land under the rule of traditional leaders would not be targeted for expropriation.

“That land is controlled by traditional leaders who are the custodians on behalf of our people,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the constitution said there should be security of tenure “for our people”.

“Our people must get land rights as well. In the rural areas our people are being given land... and our people said we would like to have security of tenure,” he said.

“This is where now the discussion is going to ensue with traditional leaders so that we don’t have two systems of land ownership in our country.”