Matjila should have stepped aside for the sake of the PIC
When Dan Matjila walks into a room, I suspect that the Public Investment Corp CEO usually believes he is the smartest man present, or at least that he is the most powerful, given the more than R2-trillion in assets of which he is a custodian. The problem with that is that I don’t think there’s anyone who can tell “Dr Dan” that his time at the helm of the institution has long come to an end and what we are now witnessing are the dying embers. When your boss has to institute a commission of inquiry into how you are doing your job, there’s a bigger message. So when Matjila penned his open letter this week, I was hoping he had finally read the tea leaves or that at the very least someone else had and he was choosing to bow out.
His tale would have been another tragic story of a public servant, of which there are many, who fell victim to the malfeasance of the administration of former president Jacob Zuma.
When former finance minister Malusi Gigaba was seemingly hell-bent on removing him as CEO late last year, because he wanted the PIC to help plug a hole in ailing state-owned assets such as SAA, it was a fight worth having. But since those final chapters of the Zuma presidency, the corporation has remained in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, raising questions of exactly how Matjila has been running it.
The latest indictment of his tenure is the collapse of VBS Bank. While Matjila has denied any direct involvement in the still unfolding story of the bank heist, the PIC was central in keeping the thieving enterprise afloat over the past couple of years.
Stepping aside wouldn’t have necessarily been an admission of guilt over the allegations of impropriety that have been levelled against him, but it would have helped to put an end to the reputational damage at the institution under his watch.
That’s just the thing to do when a commission at the taxpayers’ expense is about to tear apart the inner workings of an institution you’ve led for just short of four years. The fact that one has to be set up
— let’s just forget the reasons for the time being — is in itself a terrible report card for any CEO. What has happened at the PIC has quite simply been a failure of leadership and it starts in the CEO’s office.
Matjila has long had the chance to shoulder some of the responsibility for the falling confidence in the institution but instead, in his 2,000-word letter, he took no personal responsibility, choosing to single out disgruntled employees for the mudslinging. He also talks of the difficulty that he has faced over the past four years in managing the expectations of politicians and people of influence, something that comes with the job of leading any one of SA’s major corporates.
“It is a fine line that I continually have to negotiate — a tightrope if you will. Therefore, it is inevitable and logical that some individuals who have received a negative response to their suggestion would harbour disgruntlement and even enmity towards me,” he writes.
Nowhere in the letter was there any sign of contrition that the PIC had been dragged into the factional battles within the governing party. Ensuring its impartiality was something that I’d assume is amongst his key performance areas.
By holding on to his seat at the PIC’s Pretoria headquarters, he has ensured the worst of his tenure at the institution is about to be exposed. Much like the case of the suspended commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (Sars), Tom Moyane, there will be much theatre around his corporate shenanigans. And in the process, the PIC, where he has worked some 15 years, will be dragged through the mud, and more careers destroyed.
Defenders of the PIC’s executives often speak of the growth of assets under their watch, but one has to consider that it’s the biggest shareholder in the JSE, owning some 10% of the shares. So as the all share index rises, so do the PIC assets under management, as the corporation isn’t in the game of stockpicking. With the JSE some 14% weaker this year, it will be interesting to see the PIC’s performance. The excuse will be markets, which will be true. So why credit the executive branch of the corporation when the assets under management rise in bull markets? And over the past decade, the Alsi has gained a staggering 176% in value, making it near impossible to underperform.
This commission isn’t about judging the man on the growth of assets. It’s about his leadership, which started under the dark cloud of the ouster of his predecessor, Elias Masilela. I’m yet to meet a leader who has survived a commission; the public’s appetite for a villain must be met.
At that point, and only at that point, can renewal of the organisation begin. If Matjila believes the commission will offer an opportunity to clear his name and allow him to continue his reign at the helm of Africa’s biggest asset manager, he really needs to get smarter people into the rooms he enters.
Instead of taking personal responsibility he blamed disgruntled employees