JAUNDICED EYE
Social media this week has been full of posts by Economic Freedom Front (EFF) and uMKhonto weSizwe party (MKP) supporters declaring “We don’t trust the justice system!”.
What has brought the issue of politicised justice to the fore is the kerfuffle that has followed last Friday’s leaking of an explosive affidavit by former Venda Building Society (VBS) chairperson Tshifhiwa Matodzi, on the basis of which he reached a plea deal with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that has earned him a 15-year jail sentence on 33 charges of corruption, theft, money laundering and racketeering. That means, if he keeps his nose clean, he will be out on parole in seven-and-a-half years for his role in the R2.3 billion stripping of the VBS coffers, leading to its collapse in 2018.
His affidavit implicates the EFF’s top leadership, specifically Julius Malema and his deputy, Floyd Shivambu as well as Floyd's brother Brian. Around R16.2 million in VBS funds — stolen from the stokvels and burial societies of the rural poor — were diverted to them, ostensibly as political donations to the party. Said Matodzi in his affidavit, “Myself, Julius and Floyd understood the concept of donation to mean gratification, hence Floyd and Julius did not provide me with EFF’s own banking details for these ‘donations’ [to the party’s leaders].”
Daily Maverick, whose investigative ace Pauli van Wyk has been exposing this scandal in gory detail for at least seven years, reports that the VBS funds were used by Malema and Shivambu to purchase a restaurant in Soweto, a house for Shivambu’s parents and to make upgrades to Malema’s Sandton home. Maverick’s investigations showed how the life savings of the poor and vulnerable VBS depositors, as well as hard-scrabble municipalities around the country, were transformed into school-related expenses for Malema’s son, as well as being used to clothe the EFF leaders in Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
The motivation for the VBS payoff to the EFF leadership was the embarrassment they were causing by lobbying noisily against the R16.8 million the society had loaned to disgraced former ANC president Jacob Zuma. Basically, letting EFF in on the racket was a quid pro quo for the party to stop its criticisms.
It’s not only the EFF that suddenly finds itself under pressure from the affidavit. According to Matodzi’s statement, the ANC received R2-million following a request from its then Treasurer-General, Zweli Mkhize. However, the “donation” was processed to the bank account of an individual, not the party as one would expect of a political donation. The ANC denies wrongdoing and will investigate.
The SA Communist Party, too, was allegedly paid off to discourage it from criticising the Nkandla loan to Zuma. VBS paid R3m to settle the SACP’s 2017 national conference bill. The SACP denies the claim and will investigate.
Former National Treasury Director General Dondo Mogajane allegedly received R1 million in bribes, supposedly to ensure that the Treasury softened or withdrew its edict forbidding municipalities from investing in VBS. Mogajane denies the allegations.
EFF spokesperson Leigh-Ann Mathys said the media's “obsession” with the VBS scandal was “bordering on harassment”. “How about you also allocate the same energy spent on stories actually penned on VBS and double your energy on President Cyril Ramaphosa's illegal foreign currency that was hidden in mattresses and sofas at his Phala Phala farm?”
They are, of course, perfectly correct. South African justice is often — not all the time but often enough to matter — a political mechanism controlled by the ruling party. Phala Phala, especially now with the Democratic Alliance (DA) standing shoulder to shoulder with Ramaphosa, will never lead to convictions. VBS, however, makes jail time for Malema and Shivambu a distinct possibility.
The ANC elite has never had much to fear of law enforcement and the NPA, as long as their party membership is in good standing and they haven’t pissed off the President. On the other hand, if you are a member of Jacob Zuma’s MKP or Julius Malema’s EFF, you know that the decision to act against you has less to do with the merits of the case but whether your prosecution is politically expedient — in other words, in the interests of the ANC.
It’s a dangerous situation. There’s plenty of research showing that investment and economic development correlate strongly with an independent judicial system within a constitutional state. That’s hardly a controversial finding. What corporation would want to invest, except in the short- to medium-term, in a country where private property is vulnerable to seizure by the state without compensation, or where brigands can with impunity demand a share of every construction contract or tender to supply goods and services?
The effects are even worse at an individual level, where ordinary men and women can daily observe judicial whimsy in operation. What confidence can one have in the future when you can in your personal life observe the neighbour on the one side prosecuted for crimes, or hounded for taxes, while your neighbour on the other side commits offences with impunity?
It’s easy with these voluminous journalistic investigations into corruption to lose sight of the wood for the trees. Boiled down, Matodzi’s revelations in his affidavit more or less accord with the findings of Advocate Terry Motau’s 2018 investigative report into the VBS collapse. That, in turn, confirms the basics of the investigative journalism reports.
The question then should be why has it taken seven years before the various authorities started reacting. It shouldn’t, in any case, require the media to sound the alarm. There are many trip-wires in the financial system, set up specifically to alert the authorities to suspicious transactions.
If the ordinary South African were to try depositing millions of rands in cash to their account, or removing such a sum in cash, their bank would be quick to ask for explanations. And, in short order, so would the SA Revenue Service (SARS). If the ordinary business cannot explain to their auditors large cash flows, they would quickly find themselves unable to find anyone to sign off on their annual accounts.
If you, an ordinary South African, were to be implicated by the media and a judicial investigation in corrupt activities, the SA Police Service (SAPS), and the anti-corruption Hawks would be all over you like a rash. Your employer, especially if it were a government department or a political party, would surely, to avoid toxic fallout, suspend you from your job while a full investigation was carried out.
Yet, since 2017, this has not been the case. All the many signs of EFF corruption have been studiously ignored.
There’s only one credible explanation: SARS, SAPS, the Hawks and the NPA don’t move until they have the nod from the political powers that be. The reason why nothing has been done to investigate the EFF is that for the past seven years it hasn’t suited Ramaphosa. Now it does.
This charade even had Parliament playing along.
In 2019, the DA lodged a complaint with the Parliament's Ethics Committee over Malema’s alleged involvement in the VBS scandal. Advocate Anthea Gordon, the Acting Registrar of Members' Interests, asked for a response and received a report from the VBS liquidator confirming the flow of funds to Malema via various front companies.
Despite this, the Ethics Committee dropped the matter. It stated that it could not make a finding because it lacked “sufficient information”. Perhaps they were hoping Malema would submit a signed confession.
The ultimate cost of selective justice via governmental pressure, which is clearly happening in South Africa, is that it destroys the faith of the average Joe Soap in the political system, as well as hardening and exacerbating political differences. It’s a dangerous perversion of our democracy.
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