SAA clearly not under the control of Business Rescue Practitioners

19 February 2020

Les Matuson and SiviweDongwana, the SAA Business Rescue Practitioners, appeared before Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (SCOPA) today and failed to utter one word except who they were and did not answer a single question posed by members of the committee.

Instead Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, shielded Matuson and Dongwana from answering vital questions.

Questions the business rescue practitioners should have answered include:

Details as to how they came to the conclusion that SAA was rescuable;

The speed with which the R5.5 billion bailouts since they were appointed had been burnt; and

When the R3.5 billion bailout from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) would be used up.

A clear indication that Matuson and Dongwana are not in control was the way that the members of their "team" made every effort to keep Matuson away from committee members and the media - to the point that a member of the business rescue “team” physically yanked Matuson away from a conversation that he was having with GhalebCachalia MP, a journalist and me.

SAA is bankrupt and by the early weeks of March 2020 will have burnt, as stated by Minister Gordhan, the full R3.5 billion taxpayer bailout from the DBSA, on top of the R2 billion bailouts from banks. This in short space of only three months.

Minister Gordhan confirmed that there would be allocations in the budget next week by Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, to SAA in order to meet the repayment requirements of the R5.5 billion bailouts as well as further direct taxpayer bailouts just to keep SAA flying.

The ANC putting the vanity SAA project into business rescue was clearly a move to keep creditors and liquidation risks at bay and was never intended as a true handover of authority to Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana.

The SAA Business Rescue Practitioners have a responsibility to follow the law and to ensure that the political agendas that motivate the ANC to keep the bankrupt and taxpayer bailout dependent SAA in business have no part to play in their decisions about the survival or liquidation of SAA. Their reputation depends on it.

Issued by Alf Lees, DA Member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 19 February 2020