Former Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Thembinkosi Rawula has urged citizens to demand leadership that is accountable and that will be able to economically sustain the country.

Rawula was speaking during the announcement of his taking membership of ActionSA, where he said that the EFF’s involvement in the VBS Bank scandal was an indication that there were thieves wearing red overalls in Parliament.

ActionSA Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip on Monday welcomed Rawula to the party and described him as one of the few people in South Africa that had had the courage of his convictions to take on his former leader Julius Malema.

In 2019, Rawula posted on his Facebook profile about alleged corrupt dealings of Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu.

Rawula had alleged that Malema and Shivambu had centralised all party funds and that they had knowingly accepted money from the now-defunct VBS Mutual Bank — something the pair had always denied.

Recently, Parliament’s Ethics Committee found that Shivambu was guilty of violating the Code of Ethical Conduct and Disclosure of Members’ Interests by not declaring funds received through a company owned by his brother and which had ties to VBS.

“The fight about the VBS with the EFF is only now, even though we are not happy with the measures Parliament has taken against Floyd Shivambu, the reality is that there is evidence that they created slush accounts to ensure that they solicit money from VBS – money for the most vulnerable people. They took that money and careless enough, he [Shivambu] had money flow… to his personal account and hence he was found guilty,” he said.

He said Malema was “clever enough” to not use his personal account but rather, he claimed, Malema had used the account of a business that was not registered in his name.

“That is why Parliament is unable to catch him, but the point is, at least… that indeed the money from VBS was stolen hence Shivambu is found guilty. I am told their advocate is advising them wrong things. What is [being said] is that the money was a loan, it cannot be a loan. You cannot be loaned by a company that does not [provide] financial services, it can only be a donation and that’s what Parliament is saying,” Rawula explained.

RESONATING WITH ACTIONSA

Rawula resigned from the EFF in 2019, after successfully defending a defamation case against himself by Malema in the High and Supreme courts.

“I resonated with the ActionSA message; the message had nothing to do with what I was used to in the EFF. Because I come from a political party that touted ideology more than any other thing, but I’ve come to release that ideology and convictions are no different from religion and tradition, where people choose their ideology or religion and you cannot expect everyone to choose your religion,” he said.

ActionSA's message of ensuring there is economic justice in the country resonated with him, he added.

“What I like about ActionSA is that you cannot gloss over from the reality that poverty in South Africa has got a black face, in particular an African face. …the party was willing to stand and take a podium and say economic justice is about redressing the imbalance of the past and ensuring that you redistribute the economy to ensure that you do not have this challenge of inequality and black poverty in the country,” he said.

Rawula noted that he also resonated with party leader Herman Mashaba when he called on citizens to fix South Africa.

Meanwhile, Trollip said that the Eastern Cape was an example of a failed political establishment. He said all political parties represented in the legislature in the Eastern Cape and all political parties represented in every municipality in the Eastern Cape must take responsibility because the province comes last in every index.

“All of this bad administration, maladministration, corruption in the Eastern Cape does not take place in a vacuum, it takes place in the confines of a provincial legislature with an executive that should be held to account by the legislature. It takes place in municipalities where there are councillors who should be holding the municipality to account,” he said.

Trollip highlighted that one of the greatest challenges in the Eastern Cape was unemployment, particularly rural unemployment.

“That is why it is so important that a party like ActionSA comes into existence in the Eastern Cape,” he ended.