Why investigations into EFF corruption took seven years

Social media this week has been full of posts by EFF and uMkhonto weSizwe party supporters declaring “we don’t trust the justice system!”

What has brought the issue of politicised justice to the fore is the kerfuffle following last Friday’s leaking of an explosive affidavit by former Venda Building Society (VBS) chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi.

On the basis of it, 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.

His affidavit implicates the EFF’s top leadership – Julius Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu – as well as Floyd’s brother Brian Shivambu. About R16.2 million in VBS funds – stolen from the stokvels and burials societies of the rural poor – were diverted to them, ostensibly as political donations to the party.

Daily Maverick 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 upgrade Malema’s Sandton home.

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Maverick’s investigations showed how the life savings of the poor and vulnerable VBS depositors, as well as hard-scrabble municipalities, were transformed into school-related expenses for Malema’s son and used to clothe the EFF leaders in Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

According to Matodzi’s statement, the ANC received R2 million following a request from its then treasurer-general, Zweli Mkhize. The ANC denies wrongdoing.

The SA Communist Party (SACP), too, was allegedly paid off to discourage it from criticising the Nkandla loan to Jacob Zuma. VBS paid R3 million to settle the SACP’s 2017 national conference bill. The SACP denies the claim.

Former National Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane allegedly received R1 million in bribes, supposedly to ensure 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”. She added: “How about you also allocate the same energy on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s illegal foreign currency hidden in mattresses and sofas at his Phala Phala farm?”

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The EFF are correct. South African justice is often – not all the time but often enough to matter – a political mechanism controlled by the ruling party. The ANC elite has never had much to fear from law enforcement and the NPA, as long as their party membership is in good standing and they haven’t pissed off the president.

But if you are a member of Zuma’s MK party or Malema’s EFF, the decision to act against you has less to do with the merits of the case than whether your prosecution is politically expedient – in other words, in the interests of the ANC.

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.

Then why has it taken seven years for the authorities to start reacting? There are many tripwires in the financial system to alert the authorities to suspicious transactions. Yet, since 2017 all the many signs of EFF corruption have been ignored.

There’s only one credible explanation: the SA Revenue Service, the SA Police Service, the Hawks and the NPA don’t move until they have the nod from the political powers that be. The reason nothing has been done to investigate the EFF is that for the past seven years, it hasn’t suited Ramaphosa. Now it does.

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It’s a dangerous perversion of our democracy.