Nkosi's walkout leaves other questions hanging

BUSINESS NEWS
February 5, 2010

Bafana Nkosi has walked away from Bonitas either because he is really exhausted from all the questioning and allegations casting doubt on his integrity or because the evidence against him is so overwhelming that the best thing for his career was to quit before he was fired.

Nkosi says he left after going through "hell" over the past three to four months at the company, with all the accusations levelled against him. Though some might find it ironic that being questioned about a shopping trip to Dubai to which you and your spouse did not contribute a cent can be described as "hell".

The BCom degree holder was appointed principal officer of the country's second-largest open scheme in 1998 after working for Medscheme as fund manager for Bonitas. While this controversy has become too much for Nkosi to bear, his corporate governance principles have been challenged several times during his 11-year tenure at the scheme.

Four years ago, it was reported that the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) raised concerns about Nkosi being a director of Prescient Investment Managers, a firm that handled the investments of Bonitas.

His wife was a franchisee of Minuteman Press which was paid more than R2 million a year from the scheme, according to the scheme's 2006 annual report.

Nkosi's response to the concerns was that "people view conflict of interest in different ways".

Also in 2006, it was reported that the CMS had to push Bonitas to expedite the process of electing new members of the board of trustees after having an interim board of trustees for too long.

Nkosi is taking a three-month break to decide his future and Bonitas is still going to deliberate on whether it should continue charging him or if it should drop the case, move and start on a clean slate.

The scheme is in a sound financial position and Bonitas members will not have any sleepless nights because of unpaid claims, but the question that members should ask is: where was the board of trustees when all the alleged transgressions were committed, and shouldn't those people also quit?

BUSINESS NEWS
February 5, 2010