Attempting to vilify Magaxa over SAA

DEPARTMENT of Public Enterprises spokesperson Ellis Mnyandu should observe borders and the protocol of addressing the elected officials in public.

Either Mnyandu is a hired gun who knows no boundaries or a whippersnapper in a relentless campaign to vilify public enterprises portfolio committee chairperson Khaya Magaxa.

Mnyandu has the temerity to unleash a diatribe that “Magaxa has turned a legitimate oversight exercise into a kangaroo court at which the DPE and its staff have been slandered, denigrated and pilloried for the sake of politicking”.

That’s an insult to intelligence of committee members. A word of advice to Mnyandu: any time you defend mediocrity of others without discretion you stoop to their mediocrity.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has not hitherto been frank about how SAA’s preferred strategic equity partner was selected, apart from hiding behind the executive as if it has absolute powers to establish a confidential precedent.

Yet plans to sell equity in SAA date back to 2007, whereat the possibility of a partnership was explored to wean the airline from the continual bailouts.

What really irked many was an arbitrary revocation of a transaction adviser of the 51% acquisition of SAA which reeks of impropriety and a no-show record of Gordhan.

Methinks at the core of this is corruption that Gordhan was keen to conceal. Gordhan acted meddlesomely in favour of a wannabe equity partner without a due diligence worth the deal. Hence SAA finds itself having taken two steps forward and one step backwards.

It’s common cause that every acquisition has its own risk.

It thus follows that risks increase even more if the transaction is guesstimated.

Surely, that business rescue blunder hamstrung SAA to be in a similar position to fly on its own. Let truth be uncovered.

MORGAN PHAAHLA | Ekurhuleni