EVERY crumbling empire has its politically untouchable buffoon who ends up as the unwitting mascot of self-deluding decline. Rome had Caligula, who promoted his horse Incitatus to consul; North Korea had Kim Jong-il, who claimed he had written 1,500 books and could control the weather; the US has Donald Trump.Numerous other tales suggest it’s a malady that extends to the corporate sector too. And in SA, you’d struggle to outdo the unsecured madness of the late Thami Sokutu, the “chief risk officer” of the collapsed African Bank Investments (Abil).Now, it’s obvious that Sokutu had a crippling alcohol problem, so anything he said should be read in that context. But he was in charge of risk at an unsecured lender, which had thousands of investors, in the riskiest segment of a slowing market.Easily the most unsettling passages of John Myburgh’s report into Abil’s demise revolve around Sokutu.Myburgh says the first “bizarre issue” is whether Sokutu was ever MD of the bank.Sokutu, in his ...
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