Amid the widespread rot, theft and corruption that engulfed VBS Mutual Bank, a handful of lone heroes stood out.
The Treasury’s deputy director-general Ismail Momoniat was instrumental in getting the VBS investigation off the ground and has been criticised on several occasions by EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu, who claimed Momoniat was undermining black bureaucrats in the Treasury and that he was part of the forces who did not want to see a “black bank” succeed.
In 2016, Mariette Venter was the acting CFO of Limpopo’s Capricorn District Municipality, one of many local authorities that invested money with VBS.
Venter, a chartered accountant, was on maternity leave when the investment was made. On her return she noticed several red flags. She investigated further and found the investment did not met several policy requirements. She recalled the money, but was suspended.
In an interview with the magazine of Accountancy South Africa in 2021, she said she had never thought she would be suspended and investigated for doing her job.
She said Polokwane, where she is from, was a small town where everyone read the newspapers.
“And then you make front page — ‘Acting CFO gets suspended’ — without knowing what you did wrong. I did nothing wrong. I did my work.
“I’ve worked my whole life to be a CA. Everyone travels a different road to get there, and I always say I took the scenic route and had to work very hard, only becoming one at the age of 33 … And then you get confronted with this suspension, having done nothing wrong.
“Even though I had done nothing wrong, I still got investigated by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. When the whole story came out in public, there was the other, I think eight CAs, that were also identified, and I was being investigated as a part of them. That was very tough. It creates a lot of emotion and stress.”
She said doing the right thing was not even something she had to decide about: it was just natural instinct.
“Having worked so hard to become a CA, I am here to do whatever is right, and to stand up for it. All I knew was that the instruction I got was not the right one. I was supported by law. This is my responsibility. That is what I am responsible for, and that function falls within my job, so I have to take the responsibility and step up to what is expected of me, regardless of where the instruction is coming from.”
Yvonne Page, the former acting group CFO of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, not only prevented the SOE from investing R1bn in VBS, she went against the direct instructions of the then acting CEO Cromet Molepo, who ordered her to make the investment.
Page chose to do the right thing and informed the Treasury. In 2018 she resigned from Prasa.
The plan had been to use Prasa as bridging finance; the R1bn would have kept the VBS house of cards from collapsing for another year. But Prasa could not legally give VBS the cash injection without the approval of the Treasury.
VBS consultant Gift Manyanga’s job was to get Prasa to open an account with VBS. He succeeded in spite of Page deciding “VBS was not a proper place to house Prasa’s funds”.
According to Page, Prasa could only invest its money with registered banks, not mutual banks. VBS’s risk rating also did not meet standards.
Page asked for the VBS financials, which did not arrive. She then went online and looked up the VBS annual financial statements. The statements for March 2016 showed assets valued at R1bn. For Page, investing R1bn with a bank with assets valued at the same amount did not make sense.
She recommended to her boss, the acting group CEO of Prasa, Lindikhaya Zide, that Prasa not invest in VBS, but was overruled.
Page eventually reported to the South African Reserve Bank, and her intervention blocked senior Prasa officials from depositing money into what she described as “a Ponzi scheme.
Former EFF MP Thembinkosi Rawula had to face a defamation lawsuit by his former boss, EFF leader Julius Malema, after he posted on Facebook in 2019 that Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu had admitted in a meeting of the party’s 40-member central command team, its highest decision-making body between conferences, that they had received VBS money.
Malema wanted Rawula’s statements to be declared false and defamatory, and sought an interdict to block him from repeating the allegations.
The Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed Malema’s application, saying Rawula, who could not afford lawyers to defend himself against Malema, “had established a sustainable foundation by way of evidence that a defence of truth and public interest or fair comment was available to be pursued”.
Rawula left the EFF after making the claims.
In 2019, while the former Public Investment Corp CEO Dan Matjila was testifying at a commission of inquiry into governance issues at the fund manager, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa sent a letter to evidence leader Jannie Lubbe, accusing Matjila of receiving a R2.5m personal loan from VBS, which he never declared.
Holomisa said he had received information about an “alleged” forensic report by Nexus Forensic Services that found the fact that Matjila had not declared the loan “may constitute a conflict of interest and even possible criminal conduct”.
Terry Motau, who investigated VBS, could not make any “definitive finding” on whether Matjila was paid a bribe by VBS, but recommended that authorities investigate the matter. Matjila denied the allegation.
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