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Gears start moving in Venda Pension Fund saga

 

The legal gears are slowly starting to move in the Venda Pension Fund case, and the respondents have until 14 August to file their affidavits. The parties seem to be positive that the case will be heard before the end of the year.

The court case in question is the review application of the Minister of Finance. The minister filed an application in the Gauteng North High Court in March this year to have the reports of the Public Protectors set aside. The first report was brought out in 2012 by the then Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, and the second special report was made public in 2017.

In 2011, Adv Thuli Madonsela investigated the complaints by pensioners that the National Treasury and the Government Employees Pension Fund (GPEF) had acted improperly when privatising the Venda Pension Fund. Madonsela found, among other things, that the complainants had suffered prejudice as they were influenced to privatise their pension benefits but were not properly informed about the consequences of the privatisation.

Following Madonsela’s finding, a task team was formed to investigate the claims and verify the information of the claimants.

The issue gathered dust on the desks of various officials for a number of years. The matter eventually ended up on the desk of the new Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane. In her Special Report she directed Lungisa Fuzile, the director general of finance, to submit an action plan on remedial action to be taken.

Mkhwebane’s report also tried to address fears expressed that payment of compensation in this matter would open up a floodgate of claims by former state employees. “The remedial action in [the 2011 report] was designed to address maladministration that is demonstrably unfair and unreasonable in the specific set of circumstances of this matter,” it said.

The consolidated list of complainants estimated the number at approximately 7 000, many of whom are “penniless, relying on old-age grants, while a number had already passed on”.

In December 2017, Treasury said it was working together with the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) to address the remedial action. The GPAA embarked on a process of reviewing available data, saying that this was necessary to ensure that the project would be implemented accurately. Treasury also enlisted the services of an actuary in an attempt to establish a reliable database of potential beneficiaries of the proposed remedial action.

The hopes of thousands of pensioners to finally receive some sort of compensation were, however, dashed a few months ago when the Minister of Finance indicated that his office would contest the PP’s findings.

The PP has indicated that her office would oppose the review application. Boqwana Burns Inc was appointed as attorneys on record, who will represent her office in the case. A second group, the Venda Concerned Pensioners Group (VCPG), has joined her office in opposing the application. The VCPG is represented by Erwee Attorneys from Musina. The VCPG represents a claimed 16 300 former members of the Venda Pension Fund.

According to Mr Hennie Erwee, the case is now eventually heading for court and the Minister of Finance’s legal team will have to cross several tricky hurdles. The first of these is the fact that a review application was filed well outside the time frame allowed. The High Court will first have to condone this behaviour.

Erwee was optimistic that a preferential date would be set aside for the hearing. He said that they would ask the Judge President for the earliest possible court date because the matter had been dragging on for so long. Thousands of the affected pensioners are living in abject poverty, relying on social grants to survive. Their hopes are pinned on some sort of payment from the former pension scheme.

 

News - Date: 26 July 2019

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Anton van Zyl

Anton van Zyl has been with the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror since 1990. He graduated from the Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg) and obtained a BA Communications degree. He is a founder member of the Association of Independent Publishers.

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