SAA business rescue practitioners get licence to continue taxpayer bailouts

28 February 2020

Yesterday, the SAA creditors and lenders gave Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana, the SAA Business Rescue Practitioners, yet another extension to the 31st of March 2020 to submit their proposed SAA business rescue plan. That means they will have had three months, which is considerably more than the period stipulated in the Companies Act.

The complete lack of any urgency on the part of creditors and lenders to get the business rescue plan underway is a clear indication that they feel assured that they will get their money and that the entire business rescue process is a farce.

They know that the ANC will simply be draining billions of rand from other desperate needs for millions of poor South Africans who get no benefit from the SAA vanity project. The bailouts will undoubtedly be more than the R16.4 billion announced by Tito Mboweni in his budget speech.

Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana are under no pressure to do the correct thing to stop the wasteful expenditure of billions of hard-earned taxpayer money on SAA bailouts by applying to court for SAA to be liquidated. Instead, they have become complicit in ensuring that SAA continues to trade at the expense of the poor and the hungry.

Issued by Alf Lees, DA Member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 28 February 2020