Sudden decision to appoint new SAA board 'stinks' of corruption: Numsa

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) says the sudden appointment of the new interim SAA board “stinks” of corruption.

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan on Monday announced the appointment of an interim eight-member board, chaired by former tourism minister Derek Hanekom.

Gordhan said the interim board, effective from April 15, will serve until the introduction of strategic equity partner Takatso Consortium.

Numsa said the timing was suspicious. It said Gordhan gave no reasons for firing the previous board nor what it was it failed to do to justify the hasty removal.

“Their statement was released shortly after we released a statement exposing Gordhan for secretly firing the old board of SAA on April 14 and replacing them.

'Their statement was a shoddy attempt to legitimise an illegitimate process,” said general secretary Irvin Jim.

“This proves that Numsa was right to question the motives of minister Gordhan.”

Jim listed reasons the union believed the sudden appointment “stinks of corruption”.

“SAA exists because of an act of parliament and yet the process of appointing Takatso remains shrouded in mystery because Gordhan refuses to disclose to the public or to parliament how he came to the decision that Takatso were the right organisation to choose as equity partner,” Jim said.

Numsa also questioned the board's removal in the middle of an audit at SAA.

“The [department] claims that the people who have been chosen to lead the new board will finalise and hand over the airline to Takatso.”

The union asked why the old board was not doing the handover, and why replace an interim board with another interim board, which will have to be replaced once the Takatso deal is finalised.

“This is apparently because the previous board has raised doubts about the deal, particularly because Takatso has no money, and yet they have been hand-picked by Gordhan to take over an airline,” said the union.

The union said once Takatso took over there will be a sale of SAA’s assets .

“They will need to raise money to fund the airline, and selling its assets is the fastest way to do that.”

Jim said the last SAA audited report ending March 2017 showed that SAA’s total assets were valued at R14.5bn but now valued at R3bn.

“What happened to all of SAA’s assets? Either these assets were disposed of by the business rescue practitioner or by Pravin Gordhan and the DPE but we do not know because there are no financial statements.”

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.