Here’s hoping Nene won’t crash with SAA

WHEN Nhlanhla Nene took over as finance minister from Pravin Gordhan, the usual questions were raised. Would he be able to fend off the political pressure that came with running the finances of a government whose main policy “thinkers” firmly believed the state should play a central role in all things economic?

All fine and well in times of surplus, another thing altogether when you are faced with both a budget deficit and a current-account deficit.

There’s also the added pressure that comes with taking over a Treasury that has a wellestablished reputation ranking high not only among its peers in the emerging world but on the developed-country stage as well.

He was never going to win any popularity contests as a finance minister in austere times but Nene has played a good game in tempering the expectations of his political peers.

He has also managed, despite the many own goals SA Inc has scored over the past year, to allay concerns of rating agencies set on making up for their failures leading up to the 2008 crisis.

Nene has for the most part proved himself much stronger than sceptics believed he would be, much stronger.

Maybe it’s true that a finance minister’s hand is at its strongest when the fiscus is visibly under strain. It’s much harder to bat away fellow politicians when they know there’s cash being stashed away for a rainy day.

And Nene has indeed done his best to deliver the message that we are in austere times. But in the SAA saga he faces a challenge none of his predecessors has had to.

Where they’ve had the black and white of budgets to rely on in making a decision on any and everything relating to their department, his inheritance — the management of SAA — has proved to be a special case.

Managing a chair who, through political patronage, is just a couple of notches up the ladder ahead of him is not something Trevor Manuel or Gordhan had to deal with.

SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni’s actions in recent months amount to nothing more than a direct challenge to Nene’s custodianship of the airline. It’s a challenge threatening the credibility of the “blue-eyed boy” of the government’s 30-plus ministries.

And this isn’t an ideological debate in which the Treasury may come off second best. What’s unfolding is a battle between a board chairwoman and her political principal.

The only thing that appears to be in the former’s armoury is a cosier relationship with the president. It’s really the only conclusion one can draw from the crisis at SAA.

After losing the support of his political principal, former Eskom chair Zola Tsotsi quickly lost his station for his unwarranted meddling.

There can only be one victor in this battle between Myeni and Nene and for our sake, we’d best

We’ve not come any closer to getting a mandate for the airline

hope it’s the Treasury, one of the last vestiges of sanity in the sea of uncertainty that is South African politics.

Myeni, after seeing off two ministers, needs to walk.

But there’s a greater tragedy. We’ve not come any closer to getting a mandate for the airline. It seems with every new minister or ruling faction in Luthuli House, it changes.

Until it has a clear mandate, SAA will continue to be a vanity project. And who wouldn’t be excited over a fleet of planes that flies to the world’s leading capitals and in the best class there is? Remember those pictures of former public enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba in a pilot’s uniform . . .?

But what is its value proposition? If there is one, we are no closer to knowing just what it is.