Johannesburg – VBS Mutual Bank, which made headlines last year after it gave President Jacob Zuma a loan to reimburse the state for upgrades to his personal home, plans to list on the JSE, its chairman said on Thursday.
The bank lent Zuma R7.8million after a court ordered he pay back part of the R246 million the state spent on his luxury home.
Zuma, 74, got a R7.8 million mortgage to pay for non-security-related features, including a swimming pool, amphitheatre, a chicken run and cattle enclosure to his Nkandla residence in KwaZulu-Natal.
The nation’s top court ruled last March that Zuma had violated the constitution by not abiding by a graft ombudsman resolution that he should pay some of the more than R200 million spent on the residence.
The lender, whose clients are mostly rural homebuilders or small businesses, plans to expand from only four branches now to a nationwide network, chairman Tshifhiwa Matodzi said.
Its corporate office is in Rivonia, Johannesburg, and it has what it calls a “spread” of four branches, mainly in Limpopo. It’s a level one empowerment contributor, and claims it is 99.93 percent black owned, although a government entity, the Public Investment Corporation, holds a quarter of its stock.
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It is a no-brainer to list within the next 3 years,” Matodzi said after a media conference.
VBS has its roots in a 1980s building society based in Venda.
It has 30 000 clients with deposits of around R800 million.
Dyambeu Investments owns 25.2 percent of VBS Mutual Bank, while the Public Investment Corporation, which oversees South African government workers’ pension funds among the $124 billion in assets it holds, owns 25.3 percent.
It was initially set up, according to Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, speaking on Radio 702 last year, to help finance those who wanted to buy homes in the then-bantustans, but had no security – such as land – to back the loan.