The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE), which is still the 100% owner of SAA, says the reason the airline needs to seek out alternative funding is so it can execute its route expansion strategy and optimise its fleet.
Following the cancellation of the SAA-Takatso Aviation deal, Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan reassured employees at SAA that their airline is here to stay.
“SAA will grow. SAA will expand. Don’t allow negativity to come near us,” Gordhan told SAA staff on Friday, March 15.
“We should be grateful to government for the role it played to avoid liquidation,” he said at a virtual meeting of all staff at Airways Park, the airline’s headquarters.
“Our ambition is that SAA will make enough profit to pay the government dividends. We have rebuilt the airline, and it will make profit that can support the fiscus instead of it looking for bailouts from government.”
According to Minister Gordhan, the board, executive management and shareholder are already engaged in efforts to help the airline raise funding to sustain its route expansion plans and the optimisation of its fleet.
Noting that State Capture had played a significant role in bringing the airline to near collapse in December 2019, Gordhan told the SAA employees: “We will have zero tolerance for any corruption that rears its ugly head at SAA. We have a bright future ahead of us. We need to work together. You must work as a team.”
At the same time, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) says it will launch an investigation through the Special Investigating Unit into some of the circumstances surrounding the Takatso deal.
“Our concerns around this happened really early on because we were already asking questions around the process that was followed and the lack of transparency and the enormous levels of secrecy,” Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, Numsa National Spokesperson, told the SABC in an interview.
Numsa says it is dissatisfied with the explanation given by Pravin Gordhan and by Gordhan’s conduct in the whole affair.
Hlubi-Majola referred to a press interview with Gidon Novick, the founder of now defunct kulula.com and also of the successful domestic carrier Lift, during which he allegedly said he had been approached by the DPE and asked to join the Takatso consortium. Hlubi-Majola said that was dubious behaviour.
