Court decision an indictment on government

his week’s finding of the Gauteng high court that former SAA chair Dudu Myeni was dishonest, reckless and grossly negligent, and should never again serve as a director of a company, is a victory for honourable and patriotic South Africans and an indictment of our government.

Government and the ruling party’s selfserving inaction to hold to account corrupt politicians and their acolytes in powerful positions throughout the state means that private citizens and institutions, like Outa (the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse) in the current case, increasingly must commit time and resources to bring to book the miscreants.

It remains to be seen if the NPA will assess — without fear of political interference — the merits of further criminal investigation and eventual prosecution of Myeni, based on judge Ronel Tolmay’s judgment.

Myeni is neither the first nor the only scoundrel at SAA to have gone rogue and not to have cared about individual fiduciary duty to the company, or collective responsibility to the people of this country. Many at other state-owned companies have been complicit in the theft of state resources, even if they did not directly set out to defraud the country. But Myeni’s tenure, first as a director since 2009 — the same year Jacob Zuma became SA’s president — and as chair from 2012, tracks the worst financial years of the airline.

Over the past two decades, the government has handed over R50bn in cash and guarantees to Airways Park executives, ostensibly to keep the national airline flying.

The recent hole in SAA’s books must be attributed squarely to Myeni’s crooked ways and the supine, incompetent managers who did her bidding.

An effective board and executive team, committed to the national interest and with their attention fixed on running a clean and efficient operation at SAA, would have had no problem in dealing with the challenges attendant on modern airlines. Such a team would have sought meaningful industry partnerships, minimised fleet costs, streamlined unprofitable or non-strategic routes, and cut jobs from the bloated workforce.

Alternatively, it would have realised it was simply impossible to carry on running the airline under any circumstances at all, and reported to the government the merits of a complete withdrawal from the industry.

Now, the business rescue practitioners and a coterie of consultants must undertake this job at further cost to the airline. The government, through public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, lost in the fog of public sector union demands, continues to punt this overpriced international vanity project.

Others committed to the national interest, like Outa in the Myeni case, must overcome the government’s costly intransigence.

TMyeni is neither the first nor the only scoundrel at SAA to have gone rogue and not to have cared about individual fiduciary duty to the company