The Democratic Alliance in Limpopo will lodge a formal complaint with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) and the Office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator, and call on the Auditor-General of South Africa to investigate shocking and disgraceful reports that former employees of Great North Transport (GNT) have still not received their pension benefits — despite years of promises and political assurances.
This follows reports in the media and the DA being approached by desperate and aggrieved pensioners who have suffered years of hardship, neglect, and betrayal — a direct result of the corruption and near collapse of GNT, and the inability or unwillingness of the ANC-led provincial government to take corrective and decisive action.
The failure to pay over employee and employer pension fund contributions constitutes serious legal breaches of the Pension Funds Act, 1956, the Financial Sector Regulation Act, 2017, and the Income Tax Act, 1962 — and amounts to a criminal offense. Not only must GNT and its officials be held accountable, but so too must GNT’s Board and Tshitereke Matibe, MEC for LEDET — who could also be held personally liable.
Even promises made by Phophi Ramathuba, Premier of Limpopo and leader of the ANC in the province, have come to nought. Sadly, while we are appalled, we are not surprised. We have long warned against the ANC’s unethical governance, its capture of the state, endemic corruption, and the creeping criminalisation and dysfunction of government structures.
What makes this matter truly unconscionable is that it dates back more than 25 years. A forensic investigation by BDO found that GNT deducted pension contributions from employees but failed to remit both the employee and employer portions to the pension funds — or underpaid them. The report further found that the GNT Board failed to report this non-compliance as required under the Pension Funds Act, effectively allowing the abuse to continue unchecked.
Even more disturbing is that recent funding intended to resolve the festering pension crisis, stabilise GNT, and recapitalise the company appears to have been misappropriated. It is as if GNT’s dysfunction and its crises are being deliberately manufactured and sustained to create yet another pot of public money to be looted.
Apart from ensuring that this morally shocking and untenable pension debacle is resolved once and for all and that there is accountability, we reiterate our call for the establishment of an independent and public Commission of Enquiry into the collapse of GNT. Only a transparent enquiry conducted in full public view will uncover how and why this vital public entity was captured, who enabled it, and how to prevent it from happening again.