Now is not the time for Gupta payback

THE news that the Competition Commission is taking 18 banks for prosecution before the Competition Tribunal for currency price-fixing has, predictably, come as manna from heaven for President Jacob Zuma and legions of his supporters.

They have wasted no time in using the revelations to cry “double standards” against vocal opponents of public-sector corruption, claiming that they are soft about tackling the same within the private sector.

With the Zuma faction in the government and the ANC currently angry at South Africa’s major financial institutions for freezing the bank accounts of the president’s family friends, the Guptas, the allegations of collusion among the banks provide an opportunity to strike back.

Zuma, through Mining Minister Mosebenzi Zwane and others, has long expressed a desire to have the country’s financial institutions face a whole lot of charges, ranging from collusion to resistance to “transformation”.

That the president has not been able to set up a commission to probe why the Gupta accounts were frozen is only because his own office advised him that setting up such a commission would not be legal because the only parties likely to benefit from it were his son Duduzane and his Gupta business partners.

It was therefore no surprise in parliament that Zuma, who usually pays scant attention to current developments, especially on the economic front, took a special interest in the Competition Commission’s probe and vowed to take stern action against the financial institutions.

But the fact that Zuma is entering the fray for his own dubious motives does not mean that a probe into the conduct of these financial institutions — three of which are South African — is not justified.

Corruption, whether it occurs in the private or public sector, is unacceptable and should always be condemned.

South Africa is battling the scourge and cannot win the war unless tough action is taken against those who do wrong, no matter the sector they are involved in.

The kind of greed displayed by those who apparently manipulated and fixed the price of the rand in order to line their pockets is no different from that which drives senior politicians and civil servants to steal from taxpayers.

All of this ultimately has adverse effects for the poor and holds back South Africa’s economic development.

However, now that the Competition Commission has said that it is taking up the matter with the tribunal, the process should be allowed to run its course without political interference.

With all it faults — including the charging of exorbitant fees for services customers do not even pay for in other countries — our banking system is still regarded as one of the best in the world.

It is in the interests of the government and all of us as citizens who use banking services to ensure that the system remains so.

The temptation among those close to the president to use the scandal to launch a full-frontal attack on the industry is both short-sighted and self-defeating.

Let the accused banks be prosecuted before the tribunal and if indeed they are found to have acted illegally, let the tribunal hand them hefty fines.

What we should not allow is the opportunistic use of this controversy to justify the persecution of those financial institutions that happen to have fallen out with the president’s favourite family.