Today during a session of the Gauteng Legislature, Premier Panyaza Lesufi evaded the FF Plus's question of what will prevent his proposed Gauteng State Bank from ending up like VBS by saying that it is the wrong question to be asking.
He proceeded by saying the question that should be asked is what will prevent the State Bank from being like Standard Bank, or any of the other large banks. His reasoning is that commercial banks are not providing poor people with proper banking services, particularly when it comes to loans.
It is interesting to note that Lesufi did not want to answer the VBS-related question seeing as the VBS Bank scandal had a severely detrimental impact on many poor black people, and it was Lesufi's previous Department of Education that committed the most Covid-19-related fraud in the country, after the Department of Health.
The FF Plus finds it extremely alarming that precautions, based on lessons learned from the VBS scandal, are not a priority.
Lesufi, furthermore, indicated that the Gauteng State Bank is still being conceptualised and that much research still needs to be done on the possibility of lawfully establishing such a bank.
In a follow-up question, the FF Plus suggested that cooperative banks, owned by communities, must rather be considered and that instead of establishing a state bank, communities must be helped to create such banks.
Lesufi responded by saying that cooperative banks can indeed be looked into, but that he still believes a state bank is very important.
This response is in line with the ANC's irrational idea that the state can successfully solve all social problems, but over the past 30 years, that idea has been proven wrong time and again.
The examples are infinite, but one only has to look at the status of government's own business institutions, like the SAA, ACSA, Alexkor, the Post Office, Denel, Eskom and Land Bank.
The FF Plus will keep a close eye on the developments surrounding the establishment of a Gauteng State Bank for any irregularities, while also putting pressure on the provincial government to support cooperative banks instead.
