Foundation for VBS victims urges ANC, EFF, SACP to pay back the money

The Tshenuwani Farisani Foundation, which supports victims who lost their money in the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank, is calling on anyone who benefited illegally to repay the bank’s clients.

The foundation’s CEO, Kenneth Mathivha, said the EFF, ANC and SACP should take accountability and pay back the money as “ethical leaders”.

“The ANC should be able to stand and say ‘we are ethical leaders, and we’ll pay the money’. The SACP, which calls itself the vanguard of the poor people, should be able to pay the R3m that was paid to a service provider.

“We have since noted that the EFF will pay back R1m a month as they were given a R5m gratification. If they’re true to their word, they will pay,” Mathivha said in an interview with Newzroom Afrika.

Convicted former VBS Mutual Bank chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi implicated the ANC, the EFF and the SACP in the VBS saga. In his affidavit, he alleged that the EFF was paid R5m upfront and then R1m monthly to silence the party after the bank gave then-president Jacob Zuma a loan for Nkandla and the EFF criticised it.

The SACP allegedly asked VBS to pay a R3m conference bill it owed the Birchwood Hotel in Kempton Park in July 2017 through its then Gauteng chair, Jacob Mamabolo. The then ANC treasurer-general, Zweli Mkhize, allegedly requested R2m from the bank to pay an ANC supplier.

However, these parties denied the claims.

Matodzi was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Pretoria high court two weeks ago after pleading guilty to 33 counts, including corruption, theft, fraud and money-laundering, which led to the collapse of the bank.

While the convictions were a step in the right direction, Mathivha said, they did not lessen the cost of the financial disaster.

“Even the convictions that have been talked about in the news don’t matter to these people [victims] because nobody is telling them whether they will access their money. These are people who deposited their money for stokvels and funeral policies.

“We have more than 500 people who are left destitute. These are all elders and street vendors who sell in the streets of Thohoyandou, pensioners who now lie in limbo because they can’t access any money for their own healthcare. Many of them have died without getting the money that is due to them,” Mathivha said.

He said the people trusted the bank.

“When the bank opened in the 1980s, a lot of people, especially pensioners and vendors, saw a vehicle that would be able to save their money because they didn’t trust the main banks as they were too far from them. They found a bank they could put a face to. They were able to save for their children.”

The looting led to the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank in 2018.

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