Cyril Ramaphosa needs to come clean about VBS

You have to admire the ANC national integrity commission’s total lack of appreciation for irony in its reaction to the looting of the VBS Bank in Limpopo.

The commission said it was “of a view” that the “reputation and credibility of the ANC has been seriously damaged”.

We wonder if it is unfair to ask the commission whether it is possible to damage something – the reputation and credibility of the ANC – which does not exist.

Now that the honest men and women of the ANC – and we are assuming the members of the integrity commission are such – have decided those implicated in plundering the VBS piggy bank should be forced to “step down”, it is apparently up to the organisation’s national executive committee to send out the letters confirming this.

The integrity commission recommended that those fingered should be barred from taking part in any ANC activities.

The one positive thing about the commission’s recommendations is that, under the previous regime of Jacob Zuma, nothing like this would have been conceivable. And the new broom sweeping clean, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is slowly, but surely, dealing with the mess he inherited from the years of state capture which happened under Zuma.

Yet, Ramaphosa must also take the nation into his confidence and tell them what he knew – and when he knew it – of the corruption and theft that his comrades in the ANC were up to their eyes in.

It seems improbable, especially looking at the scale of the looting – not only in VBS, but elsewhere – that the top echelons of the ANC cannot have been aware of it.

We fully support Ramaphosa’s clean-up programme, but we need to be sure that the cleaner will do a through job and not leave dirt lurking in dark corners.

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