Naidoo states that VBS is factually and commercially insolvent in that its liabilities significantly exceed its assets.

Mkhize categorically told the committee on Tuesday morning: “What happened should not have happened.” It wasn’t due to “inability” or “ignorance” as those had been ruled out.  “They have all the right qualifications and skills.”  He went on to list the qualifications of the municipal managers and chief financial officers at the involved councils: all had appropriate graduate and post-graduate qualifications on financial management, accountancy and public administration, with two exceptions – one an education degree, another a mechanical engineering degree. 

All affected councils are on the list of 87 municipalities that are dysfunctional. All of the 14 councils that went on to bank with VBS struggle with at least one of their core responsibilities, including service delivery and paying creditors within 30 days. Projects from bulk water to road and electricity supplies have either been suspended or implementation stopped.

In a series of meetings with mayors, municipal administrators and local government MECs, he’s repeatedly been told, “We didn’t know”. National Treasury sent a notification to inform councils that they could not invest in VBS, or any mutual banks for that matter.  The response? “We didn’t see that.” Two councils acknowledged they had done wrong, the others stayed on message: “We didn’t know.”  

But the minister told MPs:

“People knew what they were doing… It’s always the clever ones, who understand the system, that will tend to crook it. You don’t get a sweeper to go and manipulate the financial management system.”

And so Mkhize has called in the forensic auditors: three auditing firms in three provinces (North West, Limpopo, Gauteng) to be completed by the latest in November 2018. It’s those forensic audits that would provide the evidence for what Mkhize billed as a comprehensive lawsuit, with the Cogta ministry laying the charges itself to “chase and try recover the money”.  The ANC's integrity commission has asked the NEC to instruct all leaders implicated in the looting of VBS bank to step down.

ANC Limpopo deputy chair Florence Radzilani and Treasurer Danny Msiza failed to appear before the commission last week in connection with the saga.

Integrity commission chair George Mashamba says the reputation and credibility of the ANC has been seriously damaged and the situation will only worsen if those implicated remain in office.

Naidoo's affidavit was filed as part of an application by the PA, formerly the Registrar of Banks, on Monday to the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria seeking the final winding up of VBS.

Naidoo states that VBS is factually and commercially insolvent in that its liabilities significantly exceed its assets.

EFF Chief Whip Floyd Shivambu decided attack was the best strategy from the speaker’s podium of the House. Holding the party line that the EFF had nothing to do with the VBS debacle and that one could not be held responsible for the actions of relatives, Shivambu put the blame on the “opportunism of the National Treasury and Reserve Bank”. Neither he nor the EFF had ever benefited “anything in the VBS looting and so-called heist”, he insisted.

Arguing that he was flattered about the chant “Pay back the money” that had accompanied his earlier appearance at the podium on an earlier legislative debate, Shivambu said he took that to be proof the EFF was setting the corruption busting pace. 

 “Sages say imitation is the most sincere, but artless, form of flattery… We are flattered.”

But it’s one of those parliamentary peculiarities that Shivambu was protected from digs, predominately from the DA, about his brother Brian Shivambu’s alleged role in the VBS saga by the same rule the ANC had used to shield former president Jacob Zuma from EFF and DA digs, be it over Nkandla or any of the scandals that hit his time in office.

If there are any claims of wrongdoing, those can be brought to the House only through a substantive motion. And that’s a whole different process that requires writing to the Speaker, and notice before it can be brought to the House. That was the ruling from the presiding officer’s chair, as was the ruling that “There’s no report before the House to say the EFF heist of VBS”.

Msiza has applied for a court order against advocate Terry Motau's Great Heist report which lists him as one of the perpetrators of the almost R2 billion heist.

Meanwhile, Radzilani has used her church to deny the allegations against her - saying she never met or contacted anyone of authority within VBS.