The unprincipled and unaccountable banks have no moral authority to moralise on the Gupta issue
11 April 2016
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted with the concern and contempt the decision by some South African banks to hypocritically and recklessly ostracise the Gupta businesses, for narrow political ends. The decision by ABSA, FNB, NEDBANK, SASFIN and KPMG to stop doing business and associating with the Guptas is nothing but political posturing. This decision will not only negatively affect the gluttonous Guptas, but will badly affect the innocent workers, who have no dog in that hunt.
COSATU demands answers from these banks; they need to explain why they decided to took these decisions, when workers are facing such a bleak future. Even the discredited and politically toxic people like the Guptas deserve to only be found guilty after a proper due process has been followed and they have never been convicted in a court of law. The federation has demanded a meeting with the Guptas to discuss the pending job losses in their companies after this decision by the banks.
To prove that they lack any developmental consciousness, they did not think about the implications that their public relations stunt was going to have on the workers. The country is shedding jobs at an alarming rate and some of these banks are actually retrenching workers ,but they saw it necessary to ostracise the Gupta owned companies that employ thousands of innocent workers.
COSATU feels that when worker’s jobs are at stake, it was inane and thoughtless of these organisations to play politics with their livelihoods. OAKBAY, Sahara Holdings and TNA might belong to the unsavoury family like the Guptas, but they employ thousands of innocent workers. Thousands of families and their livelihoods are being sacrificed by unprincipled financial institutions to pursue their own narrow agenda. Workers are a primary stakeholders in any company and to ignore their interests exposes these financial institutions for what they are, unprincipled opportunists.