The Public Investment Corporation, the body responsible for managing government pension funds and other public money in South Africa, is now facing a formal probe after billions of rands in investments through its Isibaya Fund collapsed, with some of those investments losing their value entirely.
The Democratic Alliance is driving the investigation, raising serious questions about how funds meant to protect public servants and ordinary South Africans were channelled into what the party describes as reckless investments. The losses are not small or incidental. In some cases, the money is simply gone.
The Isibaya Fund was designed to support developmental investments across South Africa. That mandate makes the scale of these losses even harder to stomach, because the people most affected are not faceless institutions. They are public sector workers counting on those funds for their retirement.
With the DA now formally on record demanding accountability, the pressure is on the PIC to explain exactly how this happened and who approved these decisions. The answers, when they come, will matter far beyond the walls of Parliament.
Originally published by AllAfrica.