The mainstream media, social media; and the man on the street, to the next door neighbour, are talking about the VBS Mutual Bank heist that saw approximately R2000 000 000 or R2 billion pilfered allegedly over a period of time. To comprehend the magnitude of money pilfering that took place: think of 200 people getting R10 million each.
A Member of Parliament (MP), to a trusted auditing firm, and high ranking politicians’ siblings, who have been implicated, has captured the collective South African imagination moreover than the corruption norm we are used to.
Although the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) are in a joint mammoth investigative effort, dare government say the dreaded Commission of Inquiry (CoI) will be established to investigate because CoIs in the past have been dismal?
Live television news bore footage of senior citizens waiting in queues for their money in what ENCA, sadly referred to as “poorest of the poor deeply affected by VBS Bank ‘heist’.”
IOL reported that, “Advocate Terry Motau, the forensic investigator who was appointed to probe VBS released a scathing finding on the conduct of KPMG’s lead auditor for the bank, Sipho Malaba. It (VBS Mutual) is corrupt and rotten to the core. Indeed, there is hardly a person in its employ, in any position of authority who is not, in some way or other, complicit,” Motau said.
If politics gets in the way of convictions of the guilty, the people of SA could snap collectively. Moving forward from this unimaginable pilfering from leaders has damaged the consciousness to those people that wake up with hope for a better tomorrow leads this #vbsheist.
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
Voltaire.
Cllr Vernon Pillay.
The following letter appeared in the Bugle (November 2018) in print. The above content was then enhanced for SEO.