EXCLUSIVE: South Africa’s biggest financial scandal is coming to TV.
We’ve got a trailer of The People vs. VBS, a Showmax documentary series from IdeaCandy about the wild case of VBS Mutual Bank, which is still in the South Africa courts nearly a decade after the events were uncovered.
The four-part series will screen over two Wednesdays from March 25 as a Showmax original. Richard Finn Gregory is the director and Elle Oosthuizen and Wim Steyn are the producers. Gregory and Oosthuizen were behind 2022’s Steinheist, another Showmax doc series about financial corruption in South Africa, and the 2025 International Emmy nominee School Ties.
The series includes interviews with VBS co-founder Madambi Muvhulawa; Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the South African Reserve Bank; former Public Investment Corporation CEO Dan Matjila; Julius Malema, founder of the Economic Freedom Fighters; and investigative journalists such as Dewald van Rensburg, who wrote the book on the case, VBS: A Dream Defrauded, and Pauli van Wyk, who co-wrote the book Malema: Money. Power. Patronage.
VBS Mutual Bank was declared insolvent in 2018 following official reports that it had been defrauding customers to the tune of billions of rand. The fraud was allegedly orchestrated by the bank’s own executives, and numerous officials and bank workers have been implicated in investigations.
The doc will show how the small mutual bank became entangled with multinational auditors, political parties, a royal household and a former president. Court proceedings are still unfolding eight years after the collapse, which saw many regular people lose their life savings.
Allegations in the documentary include R5 million in cash leaving VBS in a bag by helicopter; a mayor asking for “Christmas presents”; and the assassinations of whistle-blowers.
Many South Africans first became aware of VBS in 2016, when the bank loaned then-President Jacob Zuma over R7 million to pay back money for non-security-related upgrades to his Nkandla homestead – more than the bank’s annual net profit at the time.
The black-owned VBS was formed in 1982 and played a key role in developing finance in South Africa, and was considered a model that many hoped would be replicated across the country. However, after a management change, the bank allegedly began operating like a pyramid scheme. When VBS started missing payments and was placed under curatorship in March 2018, it triggered widespread panic.
“This is a cautionary tale about what happens when a legitimate desire for progress – to take a bank into the modern era – gets hijacked by compromised individuals,” said director Gregory. “The money at stake was just too big for people to resist and, ultimately, the victims were those who needed VBS the most: the rural villagers of the VhaVenda community.”
After premiering on Showmax, The People vs. VBS will screen on M-Net’s DStv Channel 101 at 10pm local time on Thursdays from April 2.