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announce the placement of Renaissance Merchant Bank under curatorship.
When he mentioned the dreaded word my mind quickly went back to the 2004 banking sector crisis that saw one bank after the other being closed.

I began to ask my self whether this was the beginning of another round of curatorships.
The kind that claimed the scalps of at least seven banks then. Some have since been re-licenced though.

I wondered if the banking sector suffered from bouts of amnesia they had already forgotten so soon that greediness, speculative behaviour and abuse of depositors funds would only lead to the demise of a bank or any company for that matter.

No amount of financial engineering or any attempts to camouflage shady deals will conceal the misdemeanours forever.
The truth has a way of eventually coming out all the time and this is a fact that we are all too aware of.

Why then do we see shareholders and chief executives doing that which they fully know will eventually be exposed involuntarily or otherwise.
The banking sector often presents the best models of entrepreneurship in the country, with a number of indigenous banks having started over the past two decades.

Never mind the complexities of running a bank. Our very own brothers and sisters have managed to hold their own in a sector that was previously dominated by large foreign banks.
However, the impressive record has been tainted by a few of them that have felt banking is more exciting when you break every possible corporate governance rule and any other proper system of running a bank.

Of course that route offers a quick buck and one leaves under the fallacy that they are on top of the world, only to have a rude awakening when one presses a wrong button.
In no time everything crumbles and one is back to square one, bruised and teetering on the brink of collapse.

Me thinks straight forward play-by- rule banking rewards handsomely. I interact with a number of bank executives and not one of them looks like they are starving at all. The clothes they wear, the cars they drive and the aura about them will tell you these gentlemen and ladies are really bux up.

Why someone would then engage in clandestine deals leaves us wondering why that happens.
A case in point is the Renaissance saga with investigations by the central bank revealing a number of deficiencies that include inadequate capitalisation, inappropriate shareholding structures, disintegration of corporate governance structures, high level of non-performing insider loans and gross violation of banking rules.

The bank will require at least US$55 million to recapitalise and this is no small change.
Patterson Timba is one person I have always highly regarded even during our days in Marondera when at school he would scoop every prize left right and centre. He was my senior and he would still get the top prize even in extra-curricular activities such as agriculture and other such clubs.

I know that money and riches is not something new to him.
I am certainly not about to judge him. That is not my place.

However the Renaissance issue has sent chills that more banks could be found on the wrong foot once investigations into the sector are concluded. But the central bank chief Dr Gono has said the RMB issue has been well-contained and there will be no contagion effect.

We desperately want to believe that this was just an isolated case.
Depositors have been assured that the financial sector is sound and good and that they have nothing to fear.

Its unfortunate that this has happened at a time depositors were beginning to regain confidence in the banking sector.
We sincerely hope this issue will be dealt with decisively and that the warning issued by Dr Gono last week is heeded.
In God I Trust.
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