VBS saga reveals how corrupt some politicians are

There’s a picture of old, poor pensioners sleeping outside a branch of VBS Mutual Bank for days after the bank was shut down, in the vain hope they would get back the deposits for which they had worked hard their whole lives. It’s a heartrending picture that must haunt many.

The plea and sentence agreement this week that saw former VBS chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi sentenced to a total of 495 years, to run concurrently for 15 years, lifts a veil on the participation of many in the criminal enterprise that wreaked havoc on the lives of many pensioners and depositors.

For the love of the finer things in life, including supercars, holidays in exotic foreign destinations and designer clothes, Matodzi has said he and others created a network that falsified the bank’s books, enabling them to loot and destroy depositors’ lives in the process. He stole more than R300m, while others received amounts so high they made no sense to mere mortals. This is greed that knew no bounds.

But Matodzi’s witness statement also lifts the lid on how the country’s political elite were in on the bank’s decimation. The EFF, initially concerned that VBS had extended a home loan to former president Jacob Zuma, started a public campaign meant to embarrass VBS. By his account, Matodzi met with EFF leader Julius Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu in Sandton, with party secretary Marshall Dlamini present.

A resultant R5m donation to the EFF, and a further R1m monthly payment, was apparently enough to buy their silence. Matodzi and his colleagues not only got the EFF to stop making uncomfortable noises about VBS’s funding of

Zuma, he got the “revolutionaries” to help destroy a bank built on the backs of the poor.

Further, the SACP in Gauteng, led by Jacob

Mamabolo, asked VBS and Matodzi to pay for its conference at an Ekurhuleni hotel, at a cost of

R3m, to also keep quiet about the Zuma bond.

Seemingly, R3m was enough to get the

“communists” to conveniently abandon their vociferous opposition to VBS’s funding of Zuma’s

Nkandla home. Another payment of R2m was requested in 2016 by Dr Zweli Mkhize, who at the time was the ANC’s national treasurer, to pay an unnamed supplier.

If you add to this picture Florence Radzilani, an MEC for social development in Limpopo and who was a mayor of Vhembe district municipality, and Danny Msiza, a former provincial treasurer of the ANC in the province, a troubling picture of kept politicians emerges.

When the EFF says banks must be nationalised, are they indirectly asking the other banks to use the VBS method to buy the party’s silence?

When the SACP correctly raises an issue but keeps quiet about it after a R3m payment, are we now to read this to mean that this is their silencing rate?

This would be a shameful contamination of our politics by corrupt money. Our politicians would have become extortionists, using genuine public concerns to get 30 pieces of silver for themselves.

Some will say, correctly, that Matodzi’s witness statement has not been tested through cross-examination by the people he implicates, and that their versions were not put to a presiding officer who, after weighing evidence, must decide on the credibility of the versions proffered. This is certainly what the implicated former National Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane, who now works for the Moti Group, has said.

However, Matodzi’s statement has been accepted by prosecutors and a judge of the high court who, in law, had a right to reject it if he believed it was without foundation. Further, what Matodzi says seems to corroborate the findings of advocate Terry Motau, whose “Bank Heist” report for the South African Reserve Bank led to the closure of VBS.

In any event, the seriousness of the issues raised by Matodzi against the many people implicated in this sad saga makes them deserving of ventilation in the courts. The politicians whose silence was bought through corrupt gratifications must join VBS officials in the dock and be given an opportunity to explain themselves. The victims of this scandal deserve no less.

Matodzi got the

‘ revolutionaries’ to help destroy a bank built on the backs of the poor