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VBS heist — Take us to court guys — anytime, anywhere

Marianne Thamm
By Marianne Thamm
21 Jul 2024
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The EFF has been silent since Pauli van Wyk challenged the party to a debate in front of a judge.

Threats to sue journalists for defamation are as regular as mosquitoes in the room on a humid night. Scorpio’s Pauli van Wyk, who for years has been investigating the VBS bank heist and the EFF’s role in it, has repeatedly requested all who wish to sue to “bring it on”.

This week the people’s advocate, Dali “Will Not Work For Peanuts” Mpofu, came out to bat for EFF owners-in-chief (OIC) Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu, after career-shattering allegations of corruption by former VBS chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi.

Matodzi has been sentenced to 15 years for his role in the orchestrated scheme to rob the bank of about R1.9-billion in deposits made by pensioners, hard-­working South Africans and municipalities. The EFF twosome bagged about R16.1-million in spoils.

Matodzi’s whopper of an affidavit, in which he sang like a hadeda on tik, was leaked last week and there has been an eerie radio silence from Malema and Shivambu since then.

They are usually such bruisers and screamers at hastily convened EFF press conferences.

But ignoring this VBS torpedo is not going to make it go away.

On X, Mpofu labelled Van Wyk “an unrepentant liar”. He went on: “you can mislead your unsuspecting fans but we don’t allow u to get away with your agenda-driven lies.

“You are DELIBERATELY mixing up the issues of the PR explanation, the donation and the loan.

“Agree to a public debate on this? Anytime… Anywhere?” he posted.

To which Pauli replied: “I’ll debate you in front of a judge in court. I don’t play with concepts like PR explanations vs truth. You can ask the judge about the interpretation of ‘donation’ & ‘gratification’ under Poca [Prevention of Organised Crime Act] and Precca [Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act]. Bring along Floyd Shivambu, Julius Malema and Brian Shivambu too.”

Lekker tjoepstil (very quiet) since then.

The Supreme Court of Appeal already bitch-slapped Malema in June 2021, when his appeal in a R1-million defamation case against the former high-ranking EFF member Thembinkosi Rawula failed.

Rawula served on the central command team (CCT) and represented the EFF in Parliament, and had the guts to reveal in a Facebook post that Malema and Shivambu were using EFF money for personal matters and to live their best celebrity lives.

It was Rawula who, in February 2019, baulked at Malema’s attempt to draw the party’s leadership into a “collective responsibility” for the receipt of stolen VBS money.

At a meeting, Malema explained that he, Shivambu and the EFF did indeed receive loot from VBS Mutual Bank, Rawula claimed.

Revolutionary spirit


Perhaps Malema and Shivambu imagined themselves to be revolutionaries like Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, who organised “the Erivansky Square expropriation” in 1907.

Known elsewhere as the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, the heist took place in Georgia, in the city today known as Tbilisi, its capital. “Expropriation” was a euphemism for theft and robbery.

An armed Bolshevik group attacked a bank stagecoach while it was transporting money to the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The robbers used the 241,000 roubles, as well as funds from other bank jobs, to fund their revolutionary activities.

Stalin was highly experienced at organising robberies and, as a result, gained a reputation as the Bolshevik centre’s main financier.

Our fake Gucci revolutionaries, however, spent widows’, pensioners’ and other people’s money on expensive watches, puffer jackets and designer what-whats, as well as all things bright and capitalist.

In his affidavit, VBS’s Matodzi states that “myself, Julius and Floyd understood that concept of donation to mean gratification hence Floyd and Julius did not provide me with the EFF’s own banking details for these ‘donations’”.

Read more: Ex-VBS chair lifts the lid on how Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu grabbed R16.1m from dying bank

The taxman cometh again


With so much moola in the kitty, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is bound to come sniffing around, as Malema appears to have broken a compromise agreement with it, and the institution does not take this lightly.

In 2015, it accused Malema of lying about the source of his income and slapped him with an additional R14-million tax bill, including penalties and interest. Malema’s original R18-million bill had been reduced to R7.2-million in May 2014 in a “deal” with SARS. In 2013, Juju auctioned his half-built mansion in Sandton for R5.9-million.

Back then, he had lied about a R1-million “donation” or “loan” from Kyle Phillips, the co-director of Adriano Mazzotti’s Carnilinx company.

By 2017, when Malema met Matodzi with Shivambu, the EFF’s OICs were in need of more funding for their lifestyles.

In 2023, Malema alleged at a press conference that President Cyril Ramaphosa had instructed SARS commissioner Edward Kieswetter to investigate the tax affairs of people who had attended an EFF gala dinner on 27 July.

In a responding statement, Kieswetter said that the utterances were “preceded by the statement made by Mr Malema on Saturday at the EFF rally that SARS is ‘harassing’ his family with a view to find anything unlawful against him for nefarious purpose”.

When Malema was asked to bring the receipts, he did not raise the matter again. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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