Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - Sunday 04 August 2002
Michael Schmidt
The Sinelungelo Children's Project - which looks after children from Orange Farm, Kliptown, Soweto and Alexandra - ground to a halt last year after its bank accounts were cleared out by Absa.
The project, which was started in late 2000, donated small sums to struggling families to start backyard businesses. It also ran a feeding scheme.
It received R100 000 from the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund shortly after it started - but became embroiled in a battle with the bank last August after a series of large deposits were made into its account.
The mystery deposits disappeared within a day and when the project asked Absa what was going on, it was told the sums had been deposited in error.
Then in October, a massive R1.2-million was deposited. Delighted, the project administrators went on a spending spree, taking out a bond on a R400 000 house to act as an office and cr che. They also bought two vehicles and hired extra staff.
But it all fell apart when Absa told the organisation in March that the R1.2-million windfall actually belonged to the Tshwane Metro and had been deposited in error because Tshwane's account number differed by one digit from that of the charity.
Absa then removed more than R900 000 from Sinelungelo's account, froze its accounts and demanded that it repay the R237 000 it had spent.
Things looked bleak until Metro published its plight on July 7.
Mark Pero, the regional manager of Absa group corporate and public affairs, probed the case and visited Sinelungelo to see its "poor, destitute kids" for himself.
Pero told Metro this week that Absa had "agreed the bank did make a mistake by depositing the money into the wrong account" and decided to:
Write off Sinelungelo's R237 000 debt to Tshwane, and allow it to keep the vehicles, furniture and computer equipment it bought with these funds;
Clear debts of R292 000 run up since March ;
Write off the R269 000 mortgage on the office-cum-cr che ;
Get the charity's blacklisting overturned, and;
Donate R60 000 to Sinelungelo.
Sinelungelo founder, clinical psychologist Linah Khumalo, thanked Absa and told Metro: " It's such a sense of relief. I'm really thankful. If it wasn't for the Sunday Times I don't know where we would be."
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