Cape Town - The year 2022 was a dramatic one for the Sekunjalo Group of Companies (Sekunjalo), which won a number of crucial battles in their David and Goliath war to prevent a number of South Africa’s most powerful banks from closing the group’s bank accounts.
In June, Sekunjalo won an interim order in the Equality Court preventing Nedbank from closing its bank accounts.
Western Cape High Court Judge Mokgoatji Dolamo ruled that pending the final determination of Sekunjalo’s main Equality Court application, any of its accounts that had already been closed at the time of the hearing of the application should be reopened with immediate effect.
However, unhappy with this result, Nedbank lodged an appeal, which was also shot down in October in a result hailed as serving the interests of justice.
Nedbank had sought leave to appeal the June judgment and had argued that the section of the Equality Act which governs appeals from the Equality Court allowed for an appeal against any order of such court and, as such, the order could be appealed.
Dismissing the application for leave to appeal with costs, Judge Dolamo said: “The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is that any order will include interim orders. I do not subscribe to this wide interpretation of this section.”
The matter, which was originally heard in April, ended up in the Equality Court after Western Cape High Court Judge Matthew Francis dismissed an earlier application against the banks on jurisdictional grounds.
Judge Francis referred to the need for the merits of the case to be heard at the Equality Court and the Competition Commission.
Meanwhile, the Competition Tribunal also came up trumps for Sekunjalo in a ground-breaking decision handed down on September 16, awarding interim relief preventing three banks from closing Sekunjalo Group bank accounts.
The tribunal also ordered five others to reopen bank accounts that had already been closed – on the same terms and conditions as existed before they had been closed.
The tribunal found there was sufficient prima facie evidence to warrant its decision to grant interim protection to Sekunjalo, based on the group’s case and argument that cited anti-competitive behaviour by the banks in question.
It found that if its bank accounts were closed, the group would suffer irreparable harm.
Sekunjalo brought the case to the Competition Tribunal due to nine of South Africa’s so-called “big” banks collectively, and in concert, terminating or attempting to terminate their facilities.
The nine banks were Nedbank, Absa, First Rand (which owns FNB), Sasfin, Access Bank, Standard Bank, Mercantile, Bidvest and Investec.
This would in effect have resulted in the entire group ceasing operations, meaning some R8 billion would have been wiped from the country’s fiscus.
The battles may have been won, but the war continues as Sekunjalo continues to fight attacks on its reputation, against discrimination and subversion of South Africa’s laws and regulations by the banks.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za