By: Natasha Archary

The collapse of VBS Mutual Bank still has ripple effects with hundreds of community members, burial societies and investment organisations around Venda and elsewhere now bankrupt.
Kenneth Mathivha from the Tshenuwani Farisani Foundation joins Gugulethu Mfuphi on Kaya Biz to talk about the impact the bank’s insolvency has had on those who were duped.
“Let me take you back to when the bank was formed in 1981/82. It was formed solely by people who are on the ground, the street vendors. Those people who the main banks could not service, remember this was before banks like Capitec Bank.
This bank when it was formed was to assist a backyard gardner who may have had land in the rural area, which was communal land and big banks couldn’t fund him.
VBS came in and said, ‘we can fund you,’ that’s why then when the University of Venda started, many people could afford to send their children to school.
Now, these are the very same people who lost all their savings when in 2008 they trusted some young people who came in, who were Chartered Accounts who came with knowledge and said they could assist with running the bank.
Instead of running it to the future, they ran it into the ground.”
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Biz:
Mathivha said the man named as the kingpin behind the VBS scandal, Tshifhiwa Matodzi who is alleged to have ordered and orchestrated the flow of more than R325 million to companies and people associated with him, and others are well protected.
Two municipal workers were reportedly murdered because they dared to oppose those who pillaged the money from VBS.
VBS Mutual made headlines in 2016 after it lent then President Jacob Zuma R7.8 million to reimburse the government for personal upgrades to his home in Nkandla.
The bank was placed under curatorship as a result of its increasing liquidity challenges in the last 18 months.
The VBS Bank saga came to light in 2018 after the bank was declared insolvent and bankrupt. VBS Bank was placed under curatorship.
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