"Often a noble face hides filthy ways."
This quote from the great ancient Greek playwright Euripides comes to mind whenever one finds oneself gripped by developments at South Africa's state-owned enterprises.
Recent history teaches us a valuable lesson, which should be heeded by those we entrust with driving our crippled economy.
Who can forget the ease with which Brian Molefe used our fear of the dreaded load- shedding monster to open the treasure chest at Eskom to the Guptas?
Molefe, along with trusted lieutenants including Anoj Singh and Matshela Koko, created crisis after crisis to grant the family coal supply contracts worth billions - all at the expense of Eskom and ordinary South Africans.
The feast prepared for the Guptas included a multibillion-rand coal mine, as well as a R600-million gift disguised as a contract to help pull Eskom out of the crisis.
At Transnet the family's connections assisted in scam after scam, the apex of which was a locomotives supply deal for which they earned at least R5-billion - for no real work.At the centre of all this, as well as at numerous other SOEs, was the manner in which various pieces of legislation governing how billions of rands in state procurement are spent were compromised.
If you ask members of previous boards of these organisations, they claim they were not aware of the shenanigans.
The probes into Eskom conducted by parliament's portfolio committee on public enterprises have brought to the fore just how compromised the entity's former board was.
That board's chair, Zethembe Khoza, was forced to rate his own organisation's adherence to corporate governance as abysmal.
Furthermore, Khoza and his board had allowed themselves, because of incapacity and plain corruption, to be ruled over by an executive they were meant to oversee.
While government departments hold much value for budding tenderpreneurs, it is at the SOEs that the real money can be had.
To put it into context, figures released by StatsSA last year showed that in 2016 Eskom and Transnet spent R73-billion and R34-billion respectively on capital projects alone.
The annual procurement spend by SAA is in the region of R24-billion.
Thus recent developments at the last of these crisis-ridden giants, SAA, should be worrying for South Africans emerging from the Zuma years.If insiders are to be believed, SAA, which is dragging itself out from under the impact of former board chairwoman Dudu Myeni, is in the throes of yet another takeover.
Myeni's SAA will cost taxpayers more than R15-billion in bailout cash over the next 18 months.
But somehow new CEO Vuyani Jarana - on whose equity the prospects of SAA rests - has placed himself at the centre of rather dubious procurement processes.
Last month this paper's pages carried an article detailing how Jarana, with the help of his board, threw out the procurement handbook as it concluded a contract that would see five individuals at the airline protected at a cost of R35-million over two years.
This contractwas cancelled after the media began asking questions about the deal.
Jarana would later say that the contract, which he negotiated all by himself, became necessary after threats were made to SAA's corruption-busting leadership.
To date SAA has not revealed the nature of these threats, what assessment was made before putting out the tender, or why the contract was suddenly cancelled.In another instance of dubious practice, SAA's procurement office, the bid adjudication committee, raised concern about why international consultancy Bain & Co was the preferred bidder when its bid was R90-million more than others.
Minutes and documents of that meeting will reveal that the committee also raised concerns about the fact that the company was doing pro bono work in Jarana's office, without having gone through the necessary processes.
Word has it that a livid Jarana demanded to see the minutes of the bid adjudication committee meeting after the proposal to engage Bain was rejected by the board's finance committee on the strength of the adjudication committee's concerns. This, employees suggest, was to see who among the members raised the concerns that led to the board's rejection of the project.
SAA shareholder the National Treasury will also want to know why the airline ignored its prescriptions for a transparent procurement process when hiring three UK-based consultants. The company simply circumvented proper procedures and hired the consultants, who work out of Kempton Park offices, through their UK office.
This came after Jarana allegedly hada heated exchange with officials from the Treasury's office of the chief procurement officer over the UK consultants as well as another rejected request for deviation to source R13-billion in loans.
A very real possibility is that Jarana's frustration with procurement processes is a result of pressure to respond to the urgent need to act to stave off the chronic bleeding at SAA, which runs into millions every month.But it must be asked whether bending the rules should be allowed even if intentions are good.
It is worth remembering that these processes exist not only to prevent abuse of funds, but also to establish a trail of accountability that can be referred to should things go wrong.
A study of state capture will one day reveal how circumvention of process, crisis management, empowerment and corruption busting were noble tools used to disguise the ugliest of acts.
Most of the problematic contracts, including Eskom's R1.6-billion deal with McKinsey and Gupta-linked Trillian, were entered into despite advice to the contrary from Treasury's chief procurement office.
Sadly, very little is coming out of SAA and its board over the substance of these matters. Jarana himself downplays concerns and says internal SAA information is being leaked by those looking to conceal their own corruption.
Myeni and Molefe: is that you?
Will the current SAA board members also claim in future that they had no idea of what was happening right under their noses?..