Johannesburg- It is obviously a good thing that the investigation by the SA Revenue Service into the looting of VBS Mutual Bank has begun to show us, with forensic precision, who the guilty parties are that should be held criminally liable.
One of them is the brother of EFF leader and MP Floyd Shivambu. Floyd’s brother, Brian, has been slapped with a tax bill of R28.2-million.
Documents attached to the case it is pursuing, combined with the brilliant forensic investigative journalism of Pauli van Wyk, now leave us with incontrovertible proof of corruption.
It turns out, and not surprisingly so, that Floyd Shivambu himself is not innocent.
His FNB Private Wealth Bank statements are also part of the legal proceedings and they show, combined with the work of Van Wyk, that Floyd benefited at least R1.8-million from the loot, and likely several millions more than that.
The EFF, as a party, also directly gained and Brian, the corrupt scapegoat, is likely meant to have been a mere conduit to try and give the more famous politicians some kind of plausible deniability.
Unfortunately for Floyd, Julius Malema, and the EFF, digital footprints, including bank account statements that reveal a money trail and flows of electronic transactions, are permanent.
And, like many unethical and criminally minded individuals, they forgot to cover all of their tracks.
That is not surprising either. When you are greedy and rapacious, you are bound to make an error and it is invariably a matter of time before you get your legal, moral and political comeuppance. So what should we make of it all?
What are the moral and political implications for us? In terms of the moral dimension of this story, the looting of VBS is morally repugnant.
Such a bank heist is not a victimless crime. The very people that EFF pretend to fight for politically – the poorest of the poor on the margins of South African society – deposited their monies into VBS. Municipalities, from poor towns and cities, did so too.
This means those who looted VBS stole directly from the poorest of the poor.
That is simply unforgivable.
Not only is all theft immoral but there is, in particular, something uniquely despicable about stealing from those who are incapable of quickly generating new sources of income to sustain themselves. The corruption also means service delivery was retarded further.
The political consequences are also most tragic. Since it arrived on the political scene, EFF has told us that it is the most committed to pro-poor politics of all our main political parties.
The ANC has become synonymous with corruption, and with not being responsive to the needs of the black majority.
The EFF was meant to be a government in waiting, with a vision of being the diametrically opposite of what the ANC has become.
However, it turns out that the EFF cannot be trusted to give a damn about the poor.
If the top leadership of the EFF can so brazenly steal from the poor, and be utterly unfazed by the consequences of its actions, then it is not the alternative to the ANC that it claims to be. It means that an EFF government may be every bit as venal as the ANC now is.
Of course, consistent with the nature of their thieving ways, the EFF lot respond to the evidence not by refuting it, but with thuggish behaviour, such as unleashing followers online to mete out violence, including death and rape threats against journalists and heads of institutions.
It means not only that they are corrupt, but also that their commitment to shut up critics should not be underestimated. Always judge politicians and political parties by what they do or fail to do and not by what they say they will do.
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