We turned a blind eye to SOE woes: Sisulu

ANC presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu says state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have put a strain on the economy for a long time‚ but the government turned a blind eye.

“I wish we had done something very drastic about the SOEs because they are our Achilles' heel in all of this. We need to find a way of drastically restructuring our SOEs to ensure that they perform the responsibilities they were put out there for‚” Sisulu said in an interview with Radio 702 on Thursday.

“Here we have these SOEs that we have‚ very badly managed in most cases and they have compounded our problem.

“They have been a serious strain on our economy and‚ if I were the president‚ I would immediately set up an emergency committee to look at each one of them to make sure that we can have radical transformation of those SOEs.”

She said the government needs to be certain about the people it puts in places of responsibility.

“To have had Eskom performing as dismally as it has performed‚ is just shocking‚” Sisulu said. “There have been talks about how Eskom is declining. We turned a blind eye because we were optimistic that we could do better.”

Asked who should be blamed for the failure of SOEs‚ Sisulu said: “All of us in government. We should have known long time ago that things are not right. It has been public talk that things are not right but we have looked the other way because it was convenient for us to look the other way.

“We should make sure in future that we do not allow this kind of infiltration of patronage relations into state institutions. They do not belong to anybody‚ they belong to the state.”

Sisulu said she was “dismayed” to hear from Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba that the country has not collected as much revenue as expected.