Revelations at the Zondo commission about how SAA and SAA Technical (SAAT) were plundered are infuriating. But instead of just being angry, we have, in that uniquely South African way, found some comic relief in the testimony of former chair of SAAT Yakhe Kwinana.
Her vetkoek analogy to describe her role in the illegal reversal of a lucrative tender has become the stuff of legend on local social media.
It was in response to a barrage of questions from brilliant evidence leader Kate Hofmeyr on reasons for the cancellation of a catering tender initially awarded to LSG Sky Chefs and later awarded to Air Chefs that Kwinana had us off our chairs with laughter.
“If my daughter sells fat cakes and someone next door is also selling fat cakes, why would I buy next door instead of supporting my daughter?
“I would not go next door to buy fat cakes and leave my child’s fat cakes here. Even if I had a challenge with them, I would say reduce the baking powder, add this and that so it could be to the customer’s satisfaction,” she said with a straight face.
We actually shouldn’t be laughing. It is because of reckless interference in operational and supply chain matters by Kwinana and former SAA board chair Dudu Myeni that more than 2,000 employees of the national carrier are without jobs, and planes that should be flying passengers around the world, inducing national pride, are parked in hangars because there isn’t enough money to get them onto the tarmac.
We actually shouldn’t be laughing. It is because of reckless interference in operational and supply chain matters by Kwinana and former SAA board chair Dudu Myeni that more than 2,000 employees of the national carrier are today without jobs.
At some level, I understand the desperation to get SAA back on its feet. A national carrier can be a strategic asset for a country if run well. The Ethiopians and the Emiratis have proven that. They have created incredible travel hubs with their network of routes around the world and on the continent. Dubai International Airport has become a default stopover for millions of passengers who transit through it annually, leaving billions of dollars behind, especially at its impressive duty-free shops. Ethiopian Airways plays a similar role in Africa. The capital city, Addis Ababa, benefits greatly from passenger stopovers at Bole International Airport.
This is what SAA could have become had people such as Kwinana, Myeni and their fellow conspirators not turned it into a piggy bank.
However, you do not save a sinking airline by taking money meant to fund projects that benefit the poor. That is exactly what National Treasury has done. It has cut R1.3bn from provincial conditional grants meant for eradicating pit toilets at impoverished schools, funding community libraries and money meant for HIV/Aids, TB and malaria interventions, and directed it towards winding down the SAA business rescue process. Let me write that again. Money meant for building new classrooms at mud schools, installing laboratories and libraries at schools that don’t have any; money meant for upgrading water infrastructure at ailing municipalities is going towards efforts at restarting an airline that ferries the middle and upper classes around the world.
True, employees of SAA have been in limbo for months waiting for the business rescue process to conclude so they can receive their retrenchment packages and whatever the doomed airline owes them. However, for National Treasury to take away from such critical grants is not only unconscionable, it is immoral. There is a lot of money that is lost to waste in funding unnecessary activities, costly consultants or simply just stolen which could have been recouped and redirected towards SAA. This is such as throwing the baby out, but giving its bathwater to an adult to finishing bathing.
