SAA deal: ‘Magaxa on a rogue campaign’
● Controversy around the SAA deal continued this week after the chair of the portfolio committee on public enterprises, Khaya Magaxa, called for the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to investigate the transaction.
This led to strong reaction from public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, who accused Magaxa of playing to the public gallery and politicising a parliamentary process that is supposed to be free of any influence.
“Magaxa appears instead to have gone on what increasingly looks to be a rogue campaign to accuse and convict the DPE, and by extension minister Pravin Gordhan, of impropriety without a shred of verifiable evidence, and by going beyond his mandate and sidestepping the legal opinion of parliament’s own legal adviser ... In essence, Mr 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,” said Gordhan spokesperson Elias Mnyandu this week.
People close to Gordhan told the Sunday Times they believed credence was being given to claims of impropriety in the deal which the government and the Takatso consortium mutually decided to end. “Parliament’s own legal adviser pronounced, saying there was no sign of corruption in the deal, and yet Mr Magaxa sees it fit to conflate issues by entertaining new lies by the former DG (public enterprises director-general),” said Gordhan in a statement this week.
Those close to Gordhan said there was no need for a forensic investigation into the documents that the former director-general, Kgathatso Tlhakudi, claim bear his forged signature.
“We are dealing with an individual who is trying to distract the public from his own misdemeanours and he seems very successful in doing so. As far as the parliamentary process is concerned, the complaints that the former DG lodged with the speaker’s office and elsewhere were without foundation and his allegations disappeared because there was no proof,” said one insider at the department.
Tlhakudi claims that a Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) process produced two consortiums: ASL/Blue Sky and Fairfax Africa Fund LLC/Knighthood Global. RMB did not conclude its work and proposed that the department further engage the two consortiums.
Separately, the department had been engaging Air-A/Lufthansa Consulting, Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines.
He also claims that on January 14 2021, the department had a session with the newly appointed interim board of directors of SAA led by Geoffery Qhena, and handed over the five bidders’ entities with an evaluation report to the board to take over the process as provided for by the Companies Act.
Subsequent to these claims, documents shared with parliament show that on April 7 2021 Tlhakudi had signed letters to ASL-Blue Sky Consortium and Air-A Consortium, advising them that their expression of interest was not successful. The next day he told the Takatso Consortium that its expression of interest was successful and was moving to the next round of due diligence.
But Tlhakudi has claimed to have no knowledge of the letters and maintains that his signature was forged. According to insiders at the department, RMB pulled out as transaction advisers and did not even collect the R140m fee it was going to charge — and this was because the bank cited interference with its work, allegedly in the former director-general’s office.