ON THE MONEY
STUART THEOBALD: Judiciary stops attacks on financial system in their tracks
‘Clearly there is a political agenda. The aim is to remove obstacles for those who wish to plunder’
Last week was a good one for the South African financial system. Two misguided attacks on it were nipped in the bud by the judiciary. The High Court in Pretoria soundly rejected the public protector’s demand that the Reserve Bank’s constitutional mandate be rewritten. Then, the court brought some clarity to the messy dispute between the Guptas’ Oakbay group of companies and the banks. There has been a wide-ranging assault on the institutional integrity of the banking system. This has ranged from calls for the Reserve Bank to be "nationalised" to attacks on the banks as "white monopoly capital". This campaign, which has had promoters ranging from the highest echelons of the ANC to the lowest trolls on Twitter, throws mud at the banks and their regulator.Clearly there is a political agenda. If enough of the mud sticks, the proponents may be hoping the institutions’ reputations will be sufficiently damaged that they can be removed as obstacles to those who wish to plunder. This is amid...
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