MARIANNE MERTEN: VBS cloud over justice minister casts shadow on entire executive

If a week is a long time in politics, three weeks is an eternity. That time has cost President Cyril Ramaphosa the opportunity to walk the talk of clean governance. 

Having asked in the National Council of Provinces on September 12 for “time and space” to deal with the VBS Mutual Bank coffee shop loan debacle that has embroiled justice minister Thembi Simelane, Ramaphosa will have read in take two of the Daily Maverick and News24 exposé this week that the loan agreement was likely backdated. In late August take one linked then Polokwane mayor Simelane to VBS commissioning agent Ralliom Razwinane, who is on trial for his role in the bank’s March 2018 collapse.

Though the president didn’t confirm to parliamentarians last month whether the loan agreement was among the documents his justice minister handed him, or when she did so, he said her report came “with all the documents and the attachments”. A week earlier Simelane had assured MPs that all was above board because loans did not need to be declared. It was another show of the kind of box ticking politicians excel at.

It is true that the Municipal Structures Act does not expressly require councillors to disclose loans, but it does demand that they always act “in such a way that the credibility and integrity of the municipality are not compromised”. Getting a loan through a VBS fixer engaged — but seemingly not paid — to advise a municipality that invested R349m in the mutual bank in breach of public finance regulations must surely set off alarm bells. As must the fact that Simelane agreed to mashonisa (loan shark) interest rates. 

Simelane’s Sandton coffee shop loan is straight from the Jacob Zuma Nkandla playbook, highlighting an enduring deficit of ethical conduct in public affairs. She talked to Razwinane about a loan from July to September 2016, the month Zuma secured a VBS bond to repay R7.8m for non-security upgrades to Nkandla, such as the cattle kraal and swimming pool.

In March 2016 the Constitutional Court ruled that the National Assembly “acted inconsistent with the constitution” when it absolved Zuma from the repayments ordered by the public protector, and upheld the required settlement. Thirteen years earlier, in November 2003, the parliamentary joint ethics committee had agreed with Zuma that the more than R1m in home-related benefits he received from friends and associates were loans and did not need to be declared. 

The ethics rule changed in 2014 when the new code of conduct required parliamentarians to declare “long-term loans” alongside mortgages. Because the VBS coffee shop loan was repaid by January 7 2021, Simelane didn’t declare it after joining the national executive as deputy co-operative governance minister in August of that year.

However, her declaration to parliament for the first time publicly listed directorships in the Sandton venture T5 Investment and Silvanas Events. These had not featured in a series of Polokwane municipal annual report declarations that just listed “Ts Restaurants”. This entity, such as the MTN shares and “family shares = R2m”, was not in the parliamentary declaration, though still listed were 100,000 Sasol Inzalo shares and Golden Threads Consultancy, albeit without the “R30,000” that featured in Simelane’s Polokwane council declarations. By 2022 Simelane had also declared land, a residence and a flat to parliament.   

While Simelane appeared before the ANC integrity committee on September 25, the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, had already kicked the can to Ramaphosa. It isn’t enough for the president to issue a reprimand, as he did in 2020 to then defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for giving an ANC delegation a lift on an SA Air Force plane, and communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams for ignoring the Covid-19 lockdown.

As justice minister Simelane not only has a conflict of interest with the prosecution services over any VBS corruption prosecutions, she has a conflict of interest simply by being in the job. That is a risk our battered justice system cannot afford. 

• Merten is a veteran political journalist specialising in parliament and governance.