Financial lynching by SA’s banks

“GUILT by association” is defined as “the attribution of guilt (without proof) to individuals because the people they associate with are guilty or alleged to be guilty.”

On November 15, 2021, I received a letter addressed to me in my personal capacity, marked “private and confidential” with the heading: Termination of Banking Relationship with Nedbank.

The letter cited among the following factors as the basis for Nedbank’s decision to terminate its banking relationship with me:

Your direct/indirect association with Dr Iqbal Survé and/or the Sekunjalo Group poses reputational and association risks to Nedbank.

The serious nature of the allegations levelled against Dr Survé, the Sekunjalo Group and related parties and the ongoing and increased adverse media (regardless of the substantive merits thereof or lack thereof) pose significant reputational risks to Nedbank. My personal transaction account was closed on February 15, 2022.

After more than 27 years of democratic rule, and the dictates for the observance of the Rule of Law, this was something I never expected to happen and certainly not to me.

I was born a year after the inauguration of apartheid, in 1949, and grew up under that obnoxious system, which was declared a “crime against humanity” by the whole world.

All my life I have fought racism and it does not look like that battle is anywhere near ending – not for me, and not for the majority of us who remain slaves under economic apartheid.

It was only last year that our grandson came home from school, reporting he had to stand up when his white classmates announced that the following day was going to be the birthday of one of them, and that the cake was for whites only.

There were only two “blacks” in his class.

He protested to the class teacher, who rebuked them and stated that it was the school’s policy not to discriminate on racial grounds. Racism is wild and still rampant.

The closure of my bank account is not dissimilar to “lynching” deployed in the United States by white racists.

Only in this case, it is “financial lynching” where someone else is alleged to have committed a crime, and without caring whether or not those allegations are true or false, the individual is lynched and found guilty by mere association.

In Nedbank’s own words: “Regardless of the substantive merits thereof or lack thereof.” In the villages only one person needed to accuse someone’s dog of stealing the eggs of the chicken, and everyone would want to kill the poor dog on sight, regardless of the substantive merits of the allegation or lack thereof.

Is this the same reality we are facing now – where private citizens are deprived of normal rights to run an account with a bank of their choice, and that right is terminated with impunity?

Many of us are tired of fighting to justify our existence, on the basis of the colour of our skin.

Are we to fight to our grave and what about the following generations, such as my grandson and others? Will it become their fight too?

If anyone has committed any crime, is it not the correct procedure to report such crime to the police, whose duty it is to investigate the crime, take it for prosecution, and the courts adjudicate over the matter if evidence exists to warrant such measures?

Since when do private institutions have the right and the power to be police, prosecutor, judge and jury and pass a sanction on anyone and for an unproven accusation?

Was this not what happened to George Floyd, which set America on fire when the police disclosed in the post-mortem hearing what he had done, and by which time he was dead?

Our accounts have been closed by the banks purely on the say-so of the media, a hostile one at that.

It cannot be that this kind of conduct by the banks can be tolerated or rationalised, it has caused too much harm already.

Progressive forces must stand up to this or we are all doomed, irrespective of our skin colour.

The results of our hard-won democracy will go to waste, something we cannot countenance, and our children and grandchildren will ask us why did we allow this to take place under our watch?

Is this a question we are prepared to answer for them?