SIKONATHI MANTSHANTSHA: How greed killed a dream
The provisional sequestration of some of the VBS Mutual Bank directors is just the first step in recovering what was stolen from the people of Venda
Last week’s provisional sequestration of some of the VBS Mutual Bank directors should serve as a simple but important lesson: the only sustainable way of creating wealth is entrepreneurship and dogged hard work in the service of the customer. The other, equally important, is for those who have the means to invest in the ideas of the entrepreneurs. This process normally takes generations for the capital and sweat equity investors to reap the rewards: to be genuinely wealthy, and never having to worry about law enforcement agencies barging in to disrupt the party. The founders of VBS, too, must have nursed this noble dream when they created the Venda Building Society amid all the challenges of the apartheid system in 1982. And the bank trundled along nicely, outliving many of its peers, bar the Ithala Development Finance Corp. That is, until greed took over. Judge Moroa Tsoka has granted the liquidations of the estates of Robert Madzonga, COO of the stricken bank; chair Tshifhiwa Mato...
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