Q&A

The ANC in Limpopo appears to have sat by while its deployees helped perpetrate the VBS banking scam. Chris Barron asked party secretary SOVIET LEKGANYANE …

Almost all municipalities in the province are run by the ANC. How did you allow this to happen?

Our councillors, mayors, chief whips, speakers, all of them have said they knew nothing about the investments. The investments were made by municipal officials.

I agree. They have an oversight role to play. But because we at our level don’t have forensic evidence to prove that they knew or did not know, we are accepting whatever explanation they give us.

In our meeting with the national leadership of the ANC we agreed that the matter must be referred to the ANC’s integrity commission. We have appointed a task team to investigate the circumstances that led to our municipalities putting money with VBS.

The report of the task team is very clear that the municipalities have invested money in violation of the regulations. Even after the Treasury wrote to tell them in August last year that it was illegal, some municipalities continued to invest their money with VBS.

Have you asked your councillors and mayors why they allowed it to continue even after that?

All of them said they did not know anything. They just passed the investment policies in their respective council meetings. Only two municipalities were banking with VBS before. The rest got into some kind of an investment frenzy more or less at the same time. Why all of a sudden municipalities will start investing with one bank at the same time is a mystery.

And that your councillors and mayors didn’t know anything about it?

We are giving them until the end of this month to go and ensure that there is consequence management. All of them are saying they don’t know anything about this investment. Let them go and ensure that the people who did these investments are accountable.

If they didn’t know, they were in dereliction of their duty, surely?

I agree with you. We will come to that point. Remember, we are dealing with this matter in an organised way, step by step.

So no action against them for not doing their jobs?

We are also dealing with issues of loyalty and honesty to the ANC. Let’s give them time so we can determine the extent to which they are loyal and honest to the ANC.

The interests of the ANC come before those of the people?

We are not putting the interests of the ANC ahead of the people. We’re aware of the difficulties they’re facing. But we want to gather all the facts.

Is this going to hurt you in the elections?

Let’s just say VBS is a bad occurrence to the image of the ANC. It’s a bad occurrence to the integrity and prestige of the ANC. We are extremely worried.

Shouldn’t the leadership have known, seeing the deputy chair and treasurer were so deeply involved?

The leadership in this province is new. They’re the only two who were there before.