Competition Commission urged to hold the banks accountable Picture: Timothy Bernard/African News Agency (ANA)
FOLLOWING the Competition Commission's finding declaring Nedbank and several other banks guilty of conspiring to push the Sekunjalo Group out of the banking market through prohibited practices, the Information Communication Technology Union (ICTU) accused the banks of “double-dealing”.
It urged the Commission to expose the banks and prevent them from breaking the law.
In what appeared to be an eye-opening finding on the alleged inconsistencies and violation of the country’s competition laws by the leading banks, the November 19 ruling may have laid the grounds for the long-debated unfair practices by the banks.
Like many South Africans, the ICTU said the verdict exposed the “real agenda behind” the targeting of Sekunjalo and its numerous entities.
The battle between Sekunjalo came after several banks closed transactional facilities for each of the companies within the Sekunjalo Group, including the Independent Media, one of the biggest media houses on the African continent.
ICTU General Secretary Vulture Ntuliki said: “Nedbank’s action, along with other banks, is not just harming the Sekunjalo Group—it is devastating the lives of ordinary workers.
“Our members, many of whom are breadwinners supporting extended families, are being forced into unemployment because of a targeted campaign that has nothing to do with compliance and everything to do with economic exclusion.
“This is an attack on workers who had no role in the banks’ decisions. It’s cruel, inhumane, and destructive, especially in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.
“These shifting stories from Nedbank expose the real agenda here. It’s not about risk or compliance; it's about driving a black-owned business out of the market under the guise of protecting reputational interests. This kind of double-dealing must be exposed and stopped.
ICTU was not the only organisation concerned about the bank's racial profiling and targeting of certain black-owned businesses.
Mzwandile Masina, chairperson of the Trade, Industry, and Competition Committee, recently announced plans to summon South Africa’s major banks, Standard Bank, First National Bank, Nedbank, Absa, and Investec, to Parliament to explain their policies, including arbitrary account closures.
Masinga felt that Parliament needed to hold the banks accountable for their actions, undermining economic transformation and industrial growth.
Various voices in the country, including political parties, black-owned businesses, and economic and political experts, continued to question the enormous amount of power wielded by the banks, allowing them to collude, violate, and decimate competition.
Many have blamed the government for advancing policies that appeared to be deregulating financial institutions and other big corporations.
Independent political analyst and senior lecturer at the University of Limpopo, Dr Metji Makgoba, weighed in, blaming the government for advancing “full-blown and free-market neoliberal policies” that encouraged the domination of corporations.
“Their policies are mostly deregulating capital in South Africa. This dominance allows corporations to engage in corrupt activities because they know that the state's role in the market is stifled and suppressed.
“As the ideology of corporate domination and the plunder of finance capital, neoliberalism discourages state intervention in political and economic affairs and frames big government as either incompetent or limiting to individual freedom,” Makgoba said.
The banks’ aggressive collusion, systematic targeting, and racial profiling of South Africa’s banking sector continued to come under severe scrutiny for, among other things, playing to a political gallery in their termination of accounts held by numerous black-owned businesses.
Since March 2019, the EFF has been calling for a judicial commission of inquiry with financial forensic capacity into alleged discriminatory practices by banks against black people.
The party claimed that black homeowners were charged higher interest rates than their white counterparts for home loans.
Private financial consultant and investigator Emerald van Zyl said the apartheid tactics were in full swing and that black people, as well as their businesses, were viewed as a “risk”.
He claimed they were overcharged or shut down, preventing them from participating in the economy.
“It is disappointing that banks are involved in such horrific crimes of apartheid tactics. They are deliberately sabotaging blacks. These are pure patterns of apartheid in motion,” Van Zyl said.
Redge Nkosi, director and research head at Firstsource Money and founding executive board member of London-based Monetary Reform International, said it was unimaginable that banks were closing the accounts of individuals or firms that depend on them for their economic activities.
He said the South African banking system was oligopolistic; thus, banks tended to act in “concert”.
The Sunday Independent reported earlier this week that the essence of fair competition lay in providing all businesses, regardless of their size, an equitable opportunity to compete and thrive in the marketplace, adding that by “conspiring to close Sekunjalo’s accounts, Nedbank has resorted to tactics that undermine competition, hinder consumer choice, and threaten the ecosystem of diverse financial services that are essential to a healthy economy”.
thabo.makwakwa@inl.co.za