Victor Kgmoeswana got into an eye-opening discussion with Biggie, the carwash attendant, about Ficab, Caps and PepEP.
We are all politically exposed; some more than others, and we are not talking exposure to the whims of our public representatives when power does what it does to humans.
This was the despondency in the concluding remarks by one of my regular car wash attendants at Maponya Mall, where I frequently take my car as my contribution to the township economy.
Let us call him Biggie, to protect his identity. He asked me after seeing Mzwanele Manyi and Danisa Baloyi present their case on what has become the contentious Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Bill (Ficab).
President Zuma had sent it back to Parliament in November 2016, expressing doubt about its constitutionality. On this occasion, Biggie inquired: “Uncle, zishangani, grand-grand?” (His street lingo for: “What’s the dispute about?”)
I could not say that this was the attempt to amend the original Fica of 2001. So, I resorted to simplifying it by explaining Manyi and Baloyi’s case. I tried to show him that banks had been inconsistent in reporting what Fica calls “suspicious and unusual transactions”; and now this Bill deals with what are called “politically exposed persons” (Peps). What are these, and why should reporting suspicious and unusual transactions be a problem, Biggie asked after my long lecture on these types of transactions.
He annotated his incredulity by asking if these transactions do not include the types that made some banks close the accounts of the businesses owned by the Gupta family.
Realising I was not dealing with blind school, I answered in a roundabout “yes-but” kind of way.
I was tempted to go into a sermon about white monopoly capital, but he returned to polishing cars after my first five words. I tactically changed the subject and he restored his attention.
I scraped through just enough to show him that even the rating agencies, such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, are not always objective.
In fact, and this got Biggie’s eyebrow knotted curiously, Moody’s had just paid over $800 million (R10.7bn)in fines for its role in faulty ratings in the build-up to the 2008 credit crunch.
He remembered the credit crunch, because that was when losing his last job forced him into washing cars.
Still, he was not moved. “Asibayeke aboFitch nabo Moody, Uncle; ngoba basenbezel’ ekhaya”.
I had met my match. This carwash attendant understood the bias of international rating agencies, but he admonished me about spending too much time on them.
He wanted to know, rather, why he could not open an account or get a SIM card without the laborious documentation when these Peps should not account or be reported when they move large and unexplained sums of money. He asked how else the loot from corrupt tenders would be exposed without Ficab.
Just to make sure, he asked me to define a PepEP, according to the Ficab. He dismissed me as I rattled the likes of “heads of state”. Manyi and Baloyi, he argued, did not sound like they were defending powerful politicians. This forced me to add to the list “closely associated persons” (Caps). He listened as I read off the Financial Intelligence Centre website, that this category includes “close business colleagues and personal advisers/consultants to the Pep as well as persons who obviously benefit significantly from being close to such a person”.
His vigilance had humbled me to no longer waffle on, but to quote authentic sources.
He shut me up when he said that the Caps sound just like the Guptas and lots of his fellow Sowetans who play golf with elected representatives and ministers; making a living out of goodness-knows-what, while he slugs it out daily at the carwash.
He had to hurry back to washing cars, but not before giving it to me straight: that is why the ANC is losing so much ground, because it is concerned about protecting the powerful and the influential, not people like him.
There you have it, Mzwanele and Sis’ Danisa. Your PR needs some work - at the carwash.
* Kgomoeswana is author of Africa is Open for Business. He also hosts Power Hour from Monday to Thursday on Power FM. - Twitter Handle: @VictorAfrica
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.