Robbing Peter (GEPF) to pay Paul (MCPF pension fund). Solidarity trade union called it and watch this space, called it right.

The massive R586 million paid by the State monopoly managing the pension fund for government workers (GEPF), the Public Investment Commissioner (PIC) has done a solid for municipal councillors, the majority of which are ANC, it now seems.

The pension fund for municipal councillors (MCPF), members are politicians only, was so mismanaged and bankrupt that it was placed under curatorship a while back. The curators discovered that a property developer of Klerksdorp called [email protected] owes the MCPF over R130 million. Isago agreed in a court case to pay the MCPF that money back . Only problem was that Isago did not have the money, which left the municipal councillors out of pocket.

Well, until their buddies at the PIC made a plan to massively overpay Isago for the purchase of the farm Palmietfontein at Klerksdorp, about 1000 hectares, some of it dolomite ground at R570 173 per hectare.

Here is Solidarity’s statement issued today. Read for yourself:

State capture has mutated into the planned capturing of the last ‘pot of gold’ still ‘filled with gold’ in South Africa: the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF).

The news columns were filled last week with the news of the farm Palmietfontein being bought in 2018 by the Public Investment Commissioner (PIC) on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund for the amount of R586 million.

This price is reportedly up to 2000% above the market value of the neighbouring farms. It was reported that part of the deal was that the sellers will pay over R130 million to the Municipal Councillors Pension Fund (MCPF) – presently under curatorship.

Solidarity circulated a report that we have lodged a PAIA application to the PIC requesting the disclosure of records relating to this deal. An early analysis of this deal however is the following

-Municipal Councillors Pension Fund is under curatorship and under the threat of liquidation.

-This deal with this massively inflated price, part of which will be paid over to the (MCPF) can have one true purpose only: to safe the Municipal Councillors Pension Fund from liquidation using

your (and my) pension money

-If above is true, the pension fund of state employees is used to rescue the pension fund of all the municipal councillors – the state employees’ pension money is used to rescue the pension fund of the political representatives at municipal level: classical pension capture! The pensions of ordinary state workers: police officials, nurses, secretaries and more is used to fund the pensions of representatives of political parties.

Similarly the news columns of the last two weeks were filled with the proposal from the trade union federation Cosatu (of which Popcru is a member) that Government Employee Pension Fund (GEPF)-money to the amount of R254billion should be used to bail out Eskom.

This is presently discussed and negotiated in various forums including Nedlac and according to reports, a draft agreement is presently considered.

This is highly irregular. The pension fund contributions of state employees are entrusted to the GEPF who has the fiduciary duty to invest and manage said in the best interest of the pension fund – not the best interest of Eskom or the best interest of Cosatu or Popcru.

The GEPF appointed the Public Investment Commmioner to invest their (our) money and gave them a specific mandate and set of principles to apply when doing so.

Any investment by the PIC has to be considered by the PIC against the mandate given to them by the GEPF.

This is an internal PIC process. Any PIC investment above R2billion has to be approved by the GEPF. It is highly irregular – even unlawful – that any future investment of GEPF funds by the PIC be decided upon by any external forum and even more irregular and more unlawful for the PIC and the GEPF to willy-nilly accept such external decision. It will amount to classical pension capture

On Wednesday 12 February Solidarity will host a press conference at which the first legal steps will be announced to stop the capture of public service pensions.

The nature of these legal steps will only be determined when the final (Nedlac) agreement on the funding of Eskom becomes known and/or when the PIC/GEPF accepts said agreement and approve the funding of Eskom without implementing their own internal processes or acting irrationally or unlawfully when doing so.

South Africa Today – South Africa News