Don’t politicise the tragedy that is the VBS Bank case

Last week’s news of the predawn arrest of the who’s who of the now collapsed VBS Mutual Bank by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations – popularly known as the Hawks – brought a collective, euphoric sigh of relief that could be heard across the country.

The group appeared at the Palm Ridge Regional Court for a bail hearing on a staggering 47 counts of fraud, theft, money laundering, corruption and racketeering.

Photographs of the men huddled together on the wooden court bench communicated a positive message that the criminal justice system was at long last acting against the alleged perpetrators of a foul crime against the elderly, workers and peasant customers of the bank.

They also provoked memories from July 2018 when, following the closure of VBS, depositors flocked to the bank’s branches in the desperate hope of withdrawing their savings, but vainly slept there for days on end in the midst of a ferocious winter.

They trundled back to their homes dejected and dispirited, cold and empty-handed.

During the court appearance, the suspects were warmly dressed for winter. And although some of them initially pleaded poverty, each of them managed to fork out the R100 000 the state set as bail.

What, after all, is a miserly R100 000 when you can afford to buy a helicopter and a string of luxury German vehicles, at upwards of R1 million each, some of them of the same make, varying only in colour?

Those depositors who spent anguished days and nights on the cold floor outside VBS branches in the winter of 2018 could never have dreamt of such resourcefulness.

The wholesale theft of depositor funds which collapsed the bank and wiped out their savings represented a shoving of the middle finger at their industriousness and frugal living, which did not distract from their commitment to save for a rainy day.

For those to whom justice is still a worthy human endeavour, the terrible injustice of poor people losing their life savings so that a handful of desensitised, showy and self-absorbed people can indulge in vulgar opulence, the VBS affair is a microcosm of the tragic rot in our society.

It manifests in a predatory rent-seeking middle class which, never mind its rhetoric and posture, cares for nothing but its wants. Like the comprador bourgeoisie, such a middle class might be locally resident, but it is essentially alien in that it owes no loyalties to the country and its future. That is why it loses no sleep at collapsing public and private institutions, except for when its criminal commissions attract the attention of law enforcement agencies.

Yet, the middle classes are critical to the advancement of societies, especially their ideational pursuits and processes. Those who interact with this subject will recall the 1945 Fifth Pan-African Conference’s call on intellectuals and the professional classes – the intelligentsia – “to awaken to their responsibilities” to the anticolonial struggle.

Rising to its responsibilities also means that the middle class ceases to be a class in itself – unaware of its place, interests and responsibilities – and becomes a class for itself, acquiring consciousness, a sense of purpose and reason for being.

The post-apartheid era also cries out for a middle class for itself, which awakens to its responsibilities of building enduring national institutions that respond to national challenges and maximise the nation’s capacity to confront underdevelopment, among others. Such an intelligentsia must also wage a relentless war against gluttony and the tyranny of mponeng – showiness – which corrode and break the fulcrum of what once were well-intentioned people.

As the wheels of justice begin to grind, they must be accompanied by distillation of the moral lessons of the VBS affair among professional bodies, the political class, religious leaders, pedagogists, the media and society as a whole.

We should also discuss the problem of the politicisation of crime, a phenomenon that has become the bane of South African social and political life. Our society has become adept at the art of deflection, diversion and muddying the waters whenever judicial accountability is required of anyone with a modicum of social standing.

The South African political class has, over the years, come to see conspiracy in nearly every legal case. On the whole, the proselytisers are oblivious to the need to marshall the necessary facts and logic, believing instead that it is sufficient merely to make and repeat a claim ad nauseam.

It is an attempt to normalise malfeasance and corruption in public life, which breeds impunity. Trust in public institutions soon suffers, as does social cohesion.

And is political mobilisation always deployed where and when it is required, with concomitant fervour? The evidence seems rather scanty.

Some have questioned why the Hawks have not yet acted against alleged wrongdoers at Steinhoff International Holdings following the company’s near collapse in 2017. The unstated premise of this Whataboutism is that the law enforcement agencies are failing to act on Steinhoff because the alleged wrongdoers are white while those in the VBS matter are black.

Concerns and questions about Steinhoff are legitimate and one hopes that the Hawks appreciate the nation’s thirst for answers.

And why are municipal officials who instructed or authorised the deposit of municipal funds into VBS against known legal prescripts still not charged?

But these questions and concerns notwithstanding, action against the alleged wrongdoers in the VBS case does not become less legitimate because there is no action – yet – on Steinhoff, or any other case.

It would be strange if law enforcement agencies operated on the basis of such manifestly flawed logic. Certainly, no case would ever be brought before the courts and society would be the poorer for it.

Does this mean that we should not protest injustice in the application of the law?

Of course not. But it is one thing to fight the misapplication of the law and quite another to shield wrongdoers from accountability by political means. It is to defeat the ends of justice.

Finally, think of and place yourself in the shoes of that peasant or worker who lost all their savings at VBS or, worse still, drowned and died in tears without solace.

Mukoni Ratshitanga.

• Ratshitanga is a consultant, social and political commentator.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.