THE president of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Mzwanele Nyhontso, urged the Sekunjalo Group and Independent Media not to give up the fight to protect their right to freedom of the press and speech and the interest of their 1 600 media employees who are at risk of losing their jobs as the termination of the companies’ bank accounts threatened to collapse the biggest media group in the country.
Nyhontso decried the establishment’s move to suppress media freedom. “The freedom of expression is not there (in South Africa). It is just there on paper but once you practise it, they deal with you, they censor you. Freedom of expression is only there in the Constitution but is not guaranteed.
“I also hope that Independent Media would go to the Constitutional Court and fight for what rightfully belongs to them so that they don’t close those accounts,” Nyhontso said.
He said the possibility of job losses was saddest part. “We are looking at many things including the families (of the companies’ employees) that are going to be affected.
“Remember it is you who is working there but you are also supporting 10, 15, 20 family members not even in your own (direct) family but even in your extended family. Families will be affected and therefore Constitutional Court must come in handy here,” Nyhontso said.
Nyhontso alleged that he recently got first-hand experience of being discriminated against by draconian bank policy after Standard Bank rejected his application for an account.
He alleged that the bank accused him of being politically exposed.
He said he approached Standard Bank through its online system and by phone to open a personal account two months ago. He said did not have written correspondence with the bank.
“I made an application, and the response was you cannot open it, you are politically exposed,” he said.
However, Standard Bank spokesperson Ross Linstrom denied that Nyhontso's application was declined.
“The application has been processed and is being opened as per the client's request. The bank has no record of the application being declined be it via the branch or the online channel,” Linstrom said.
But Nyhontso is not convinced. “Why did it take six months to process my account? I don’t want it anymore but I still want to know what is to be politically exposed,” he said.
Nyhontso said after the Sunday Independent had sent an inquiry to Linstrom, he was called by a bank’s senior official to discuss the matter, but he insisted that he was no longer interested in doing business with Standard Bank.
Nyhontso said the bank did not explain how he was politically exposed. “I have been asking them what this thing means. What is to be politically exposed? And they could not tell me,” he said.
According to LexisNexis Risk Solutions: “A politically exposed person is someone who, through their prominent position or influence, is more susceptible to being involved in bribery or corruption.”
Nyhontso said this did not apply to him.
“I was never even accused (of corruption), let alone being charged. I worked for a bank in fact for a long time in Mthatha, and there was not one person who accused me of stealing even R2 while I was in school,” Nyhontso said.
After being rejected, he said he then moved to Nedbank, which gave him the account without a run-around.
“Standard Bank is tottering with politics simply because it is a British bank and it is part of imperialism,” he said.
Standard Bank was formed by a group of imperialists led by politician and businessman John Paterson in 1862, during the peak of colonialism and the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa. It was first registered as the Standard Bank of British South Africa, a subsidiary of the British-based Standard Bank.
Nyhontso approached Standard Bank because he wanted to receive his parliamentary salary through the bank.
After all, he said, Parliament paid his party’s constituency allowance through another Standard Bank account, which he was now in the process of shutting down.