WHERE THE SLIPPERY SLIDE BEGAN
After Holomisa was kicked out for blowing the whistle the ANC became corrupted from top to bottom and has never recovered
On August 30 1996 the ANC took a bad, mad, near-suicidal decision. It expelled Bantu Holomisa from its ranks. The reason? He told the truth about how one of its leaders — and later the whole party — had been corrupted.
Holomisa invited the ire of the party he was serving as a deputy minister by accusing the then public enterprises minister Stella Sigcau of accepting part of a R2m bribe paid by casino mogul Sol Kerzner to secure a gambling monopoly in the former
Transkei. Worse, he said the ANC had itself received a R2m donation from Kerzner. The party was outraged, but the truth was out. Its president at the time, Nelson Mandela, later confirmed the donation and that some party leaders had accepted favours from Kerzner.
The ANC did not care about the clear corruption pointed out by a man who, in December 1994, won the highest vote in elections to the national executive committee. Instead, it found Holomisa guilty of “conduct unbecoming an ANC member” and of “bringing the party into disrepute”.
We can glean two things from this. First, even back in 1996, just two years after it had ascended to power, it was “conduct unbecoming” for a member of the ANC to expose corruption. Second, you are bringing the ANC into disrepute by calling out the corrupt in its midst.
To stay inside the ANC tent, therefore, you have to tolerate corruption and, indeed, do your best to ensure such corruption is not exposed. The ANC comes first.
It continues to amaze me how ANC leaders, one after the other, can sit in parliament and look at Holomisa without feeling shame and embarrassment. They kicked out one of their own for speaking truth. They stood with the corrupt person, not the righteous one.
Such moral and ethical lapses have consequences. After Holomisa was kicked out, it became normal to protect the corrupt within the party while booting out those who stand up against such acts. Ten years after Holomisa’s expulsion, Thabo Mbeki, one of those who were part of the leadership that shafted Holomisa, was himself pushed out of power for standing up against what he believed was the looming corruption of a Jacob Zuma presidency.
Today, President Cyril Ramaphosa is battling to clean up the party. The ANC is riddled with corruption from top to bottom. The party’s defence of Zuma against the likes of former public protector Thuli Madonsela and others who exposed his corruption has come to define the ANC.
And so here we are, 25 years after Holomisa’s disgraceful expulsion, and the ANC’s cover-up has come back to haunt it. After 27 years in power, the ANC is the party of corruption.
It is in this context that one has to applaud Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane for finally firing his health MEC, Sindiswa Gomba, after she was charged with being part of a group that allegedly conspired to loot R10m set aside for Mandela’s funeral in December 2013.
In true ANC style, Gomba refused to step down. In this respect she was following in the footsteps of ANC leaders such as Ace Magashule, Zuma (who refuses to appear before the Zondo commission to clear his name), Bongani Bongo and others.
That is the price the party has to pay for the original sin it committed in 1996.
What now? Ramaphosa has decided to clean house. His method is to eat the corruption elephant engulfing his party and SA in small chunks. So he started by cleaning up the National Prosecuting Authority and other prosecutorial services, chipping away at corruption via state institutions. He hopes this will clear the rot from the ANC without destabilising the party.
The extremely loud wailing we are hearing right now from Zuma and Magashule is a result of the noose tightening around their necks. They are desperate men. They know the only way they can survive now is to get rid of Ramaphosa, just as they got rid of Mbeki. Don’t underestimate them. They are ruthless.
Their departure, however, would not remove the stain of what the ANC did to Holomisa — and to itself.
Gomba’s firing strengthens Ramaphosa’s quest to clean up the ANC whose defence of Zuma has come to define it
Private equity firm Apis Partners and a Phillipines-based familyowned conglomerate, JG Summit, have bought 20% of TymeBank, SA’s largest digital-only bank, controlled by African Rainbow Capital (ARC), for R1.6bn.
This implies a value of R8bn for TymeBank, but the calculation is complicated, since ARC is also putting in more money. Either way, it isn’t bad going for a bank which launched just two years ago, and now has 3-million customers.
As part of the deal, TymeBank will establish a new bank in the Philippines in a joint venture with JG Summit.
The JG Summit conglomerate, controlled by the Gokongwei family, owns 52 malls in the Southeast Asian country. All of these will be suitable points of distribution for TymeBank.
JG Summit CEO Lance Gokongwei says he sees digital banking as the next growth area. His group hopes to learn more about TymeBank’s experience and to apply its technology and success to the Philippines. By law the new Tyme Philippines has to be majority local-controlled: 60% will be held by JG Summit and 40% by TymeBank.
Tyme is no stranger to the region. Its international head office is in Singapore and it has offices in Hong Kong and Ho
Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam. From the days when it was controlled by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, it has designed, built and operated digital banks, and the emphasis has been on the mass market.
After the Philippines, TymeBank is planning to launch into the Malaysian market.
Inevitably, the TymeBank deal isn’t billed to be about making money but about “financial inclusion”, a core theme of Apis Partners, and it is often mentioned in ARC presentations.
ARC chair Patrice Motsepe says he is delighted to see the new shareholders come on board at a time when there is so much uncertainty in SA. But TymeBank remains black-controlled as ARC retains a 59% holding.
It remains the most significant asset in ARC, depending on whether the Rain telecoms network (in which it has a 20% stake) reaches its potential.
Jojo Malolos, the CEO of JG Digital Equity Ventures (part of the JG Summit group), says the Philippines has a lot of the same emerging-market characteristics as SA and he believes that the population will adapt to TymeBank quickly. He says 70% of the population is unbanked.
“It will be more comfortable doing its banking in the kiosks in our equivalent of Pick n Pay than it will be in a traditional bank.”
And there are 120,000 small businesses which are tenants of JG’s malls.
Malolos believes that in emerging countries there needs to be some physical presence for digital banks, as well as a convenient way to draw and deposit cash — as TymeBank clients can do at Pick n Pay or Boxer tills. Opening accounts is also impressively easy at TymeBank SA and can be carried out in five minutes, with the Fica process carried out as biometric data is checked.
ARC co-CEO Johan van Zyl says it would not have made sense to bring in a conventional banking group as a partner for Tyme. “They have their own customers which they need to retain. It wouldn’t have been a good fit with our disruptive model.”
Tyme’s new partners are highly experienced at financial disruption. Apis managing partner Matteo Stefanel says: “We are financial ser
vices people and I am afraid we aren’t much fun. We don’t get invited to many parties.”
Stefanel says it is not often that he has been able to invest in a bank at just the right point in its growth phase.
While it already has 3-million clients after launching in February 2019, TymeBank is set to break even within 18 months. Even the entry of Michael Jordaan’s Bank Zero will not be lethal competition, since that bank is expected to focus primarily on the small business market.
Malolos will bring considerable experience as a Tyme shareholder.
He started
Mobile Payment Solutions, which introduced mobile payments into Africa, Asia and Latin America. And through his Wing business, he introduced mobile banking into the poorly developed Cambodian banking industry.
Stefanel says he likes the hybrid nature of TymeBank, which is neither a pure transactional platform nor a pure lender. It can also mine the data accumulated by the millions of Pick n Pay Smart Shopper cards. TymeBank clients also get Smart Shopper points when they transact.
TymeBank CEO Tauriq Keraan says that of the 3-million customers, 1.7-million are active. “It is tough in a sophisticated banking environment such as SA to get primary banking clients.” But TymeBank is still one of the fastestgrowing digital banks in the world.
“We run our savings and transactional business at a profit, not as a loss leader,” says Keraan, “and we are rolling out products, for our own account or with partners, such as buy-now pay-later loans for high-ticket items, as well as insurance products in partnership with Hollard.
“Before the end of the year we will introduce credit cards in partnership with RCS.”
ARC chair Patrice Motsepe is delighted to see the new shareholders come on board at a time when significant uncertainty reigns in SA