ROLIVHUWA SADIKI
SOME of the elderly persons who lost their savings with the collapse of the VBS Mutual bank died destitute and were buried like paupers with poor families struggling to give them decent funerals.
Limpopo SA Communist Party provincial spokesperson Machike Thobejane articulated this sad turn of events while welcoming this week’s arrest of eight suspects linked to the collapse of the bank.
“Many of them were buried like paupers with poor families struggling to get a coffin, pay a mortuary or buy food for burial because they had become pauperized by the brazen theft of their savings and their deposits,” Machike said.
“Such a situation is totally untenable. People responsible for that situation must be made to pay back the money. Once found guilty, their properties must be sold to recoup the stolen money,” he added.
The SACP has called for more arrests of all the individuals implicated in the collapse of the now defunct bank.
The party also acknowledges and welcomes the arrests of the eight suspects, with seven having appeared at the Palmridge Magistrate’s Court on Thursday stating that the arrests symbolise that the people involved in defrauding the bank will be brought to book.
Thobejane said the majority of the elderly and sickly depositors lost their lives because of endless worries, sleepless nights, stress and depression upon learning that their investments had been squandered.
VBS Mutual bank was liquidated in March 2019 after an amount of R2bn was looted by politically connected individuals in a series of events between 2015 and 2018 with some prominent figures including the bank’s former chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi alleged to be the mastermind behind the scandal.
With corruption and alleged political assassinations slowly rising in Limpopo, the province has lost three comrades since the demise of the bank.
Fetakgomo Tubatse municipality ward 5 councillor Thabang Maupa, SA Municipal Workers’s Union (Samwu) comrades Tshililo Timson ‘TT’ Musetsho and Ronald Mani died in a hail of bullets in separate incidents for fighting against certain Limpopo municipalities’ conducts of illegal investments with the bank.
Mani and Musetsho were also employees at the Vhembe District Municipality which violated the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) by investing R300 000 with the bank during the ruling party’s executive member Florence Radzilani’s tenure.
The money could not be recouped when the bank collapsed.
Machike says the late comrades’s bloodshed will not be in vain.
“We hope that this is the beginning and that all the municipal officials and office-bearers will also finally face the full might of the law for their shenanigans. No stone should be left unturned in getting the money back to the people of the province,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) says it is ready for the trial. Speaking after the adjournment of the bail application hearing, NPA spokesperson Sipho Ngwema promised that justice will be served.
“There is nothing surprising. As I said, the state is ready, we can start tomorrow. Of course we need to take into account of the new evidence that we have found. But that also assist in terms of the other legs of this investigation. It’s going to be a long journey in terms of the entire investigation but in terms of this leg, we are fairly content that we are ready to start and go on trial,” Ngwema said.
(Compiled by Inside Politics staff)
