The former mayor of the Merafong City Local Municipality, Maphefo Mogale Letsie, and other councillors and officials from the ruling party came under scrutiny over the fact that Merafong invested R50 million to VBS Bank, all of which was lost when the bank went bankrupt.
Although politicians such as Mogale-Letsie were cleared of any blame in the VBS scandal by an investigation done into the matter, it has since become clear that this investigation was not done thoroughly.
One of the matters that the investigators failed to pick up, is for instance that the former executive mayor of the West Rand District Municipality, Mr Dennis Thabe, got a home loan of R1 840 000 from VBS Mutual Bank for a plot in the Magaliesburg area in 2017. This information was obtained by a property ownership search on the website WinDeed. This municipality invested more than R347 million with VBS.
An issue such as this loan also have been picked up in a lifestyle audit, which is something for which opposition parties and the public have long since asked. Lifestyle audits would also have picked up other top office bearers spending above their means, even if they did not get money from VBS Mutual Bank.
Although the Herald has not yet been able to obtain information on some of our local councillors, a search of Mr Boyce Maneli, from who Thabe took over the mayor’s seat in the West Rand, shows that he has seven properties in the Middelburg area in the Eastern Cape registered in his name, while the former mayor of the Randwest City in the Randfontein and Westonaria area, Ms Brenda Mahuma, owns three properties. She purchased one in 2017 and the other two in 2020.
Maneli purchased one of his properties in 2014, all the others in 2016.
Neither Maneli nor Mahuma got loans from VBS.
If Merafong did not lose the R50 million at VBS, it could have been used for important other work, such as putting in two new electrical transformers for the Fochville area.
