Daily Dispatch

Monstrously awful debacle

IN THE article opposite this editorial opinion, our Wednesday columnist, Bantu Mniki, laments the reprehensible behaviour of the executive management and the board of yet another faltering state-owned enterprise. Rightly so. It beggars belief that 11 fat cats at PetroSA were given the green light to bleed R17.3million out of a taxpayer-funded company that is R14.5-billion in the red and is now slashing jobs by almost 40%.

Even worse when one considers that the R14.5-billion loss sustained by Petro SA in the 2014/15 financial year is the biggest loss notched up by a South African state-owned entity.

Further, it accrued not from one failed project, but from a parade of catastrophes.

Imagine that – a shambles so vast and so costly that Prasa’s too-tall-train debacle, at a mere R2.65-billion, is diminished to singletrack dwarfdom.

Consider too what it must have taken to earn the notorious status of the country’s biggest-loss making SOE – surpassing an entire stable of parastatals which lurch between the credit ratings agencies like permanent patrons from a real-life shebeen.

But then, the extent of PetroSA’s gemors should not surprise anyone when the style of its oversight is considered.

That the board was fully aware of the severity of PetroSA’s condition cannot be disputed. Just one month ago it sought to withhold from parliament’s energy committee the gory results of a comprehensive forensic audit report on the massive losses. Instead it offered “an executive summary”.

To their credit the parliamentarians did not buy it, but finally a compromise was reached and the board was allowed to make its presentation behind closed doors with Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.

The point here is that this very same SOE oversight body, knowing full well the extent of the financial haemorrhaging, bought into a so-called “legal opinion” that said “affordability would not qualify as a justifiable reason” not to pay bonuses to its executives.

On that basis the maleficent 11 were empowered to dance towards Christmas with their pockets disproportionately bulging.

It is a saga so ludicrous that it would be comedic were it not for the pain inflicted on punch-drunk taxpayers, not to mention the poor, who are punished more than all.

But perhaps even more disquieting than the unjustifiable rewards for failure that were revealed on the pages of the Sunday Times at the weekend, has been the response from the helm of government.

Up until last night the silence was deafening. Not even the suggestion of a vacuous investigation.

For citizens, the experience of being cast into a silent void is not a pleasant one. And in that space of drift it is difficult to disregard the possibility that an entirely different message is being sent to the ordinary inhabitants of a Thuli Madonsela-deprived South Africa.

One that says quite simply: Suck it up!