Former Venda king Toni Mphephu-Ramabulana has lost his bid to appeal a ruling ordering him to pay R5.6 million to the liquidator of VBS Mutual Bank.
Mphephu-Ramabulana was officially recognised as the king of the VhaVenda Community in a proclamation signed by former president Jacob Zuma in 2012. But he was unseated in late 2021 in a court case that made its way to the Constitutional Court.
A year later, Mphephu-Ramabulana was ordered to pay R5.6 million to VBS liquidator Anoosh Rooplal related to bank financing he received for three luxury vehicles.
Last year, the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg heard that between 2015 and 2018, Mphephu-Ramabulana received millions of rands in financing to buy a Range Rover 5.0 V8, a BMW 760i Sedan, and a Mercedes-Benz V250d.
But he defaulted on his vehicle repayments. He was later issued with a letter of demand by Rooplal, who had been appointed VBS’s liquidator in 2018.
While the Mphephu-Ramabulana’s lawyers initially agreed that he would make the necessary repayments, they later changed track to argue that VBS was not a registered credit provider and should not have lent funds to the “overindebted” king.
At the same time, Mphephu-Ramabulana declined to surrender the cars to Rooplal.
In November 2022, the court dismissed the former king’s defence as “far-fetched and legally untenable”.
It cancelled the contracts with VBS and ordered him to pay R5.6 million to Roopal.
Mphephu-Ramabulana then applied for leave to appeal the order, which has now also been turned down.
Judge Motsamai Makume – who also oversaw the court case last year – said Mphephu-Ramabulana’s arguments were so weak that “none of them would stand any possibility of succeeding in the appeal court”.
He dismissed the application for leave to appeal, which means that the former king is again on the hook to pay back the R5.6 million.