What a giddy prospect: a well-functioning Public Investment Corp (PIC) board. It wouldn’t necessarily change the country’s trajectory, but it could have a significant beneficial impact on it — and not just in the public sector.
The PIC has been the go-to piggy bank for rogues using the flimsiest of business proposals to dress up what were shakedowns. As the easy money from state enterprises dried up, the PIC became even more attractive.
The situation didn’t begin in the Jacob Zuma era, it just got totally out of hand. (Those who recall the old regime say the "piggy-banking" goes back decades.) Remember the dosh the Elephant Consortium made courtesy of PIC funding for its Telkom BEE deal? So much dosh that former ANC policy head and consortium member Smuts Ngonyama was prompted to explain: "I did not join the struggle to be poor." That was back in 2005 and we were all shocked.
In a way it’s good that 15 years on the largesse extended by the PIC still has the capacity to shock us. It suggests we have not become inured to corruption. Those who doubt the PIC’s recent capacity to shock should read the court papers it lodged with the Cape Town high court.
The court move was in response to the prompt by the Companies & Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), which regulates implementation of the Companies Act, that something needed to be done about claiming back the R4.3bn it poured into Iqbal Survé’s Ayo in December 2017.
Those who doubt the PIC’s recent capacity to shock should read the papers it has filed in court
The court papers reveal there wasn’t even the pretence of going through any process that might justify such a hefty investment. Anyone trying to get a few thousand rands from their bank would have been put through something more rigorous. It was as though former CEO Dan Matjila couldn’t be bothered to pretend. Perhaps by December 2017 Matjila had realised his job was that of a disburser of funds to anyone who could claim allegiance to the Zuma faction.
Late December 2017 was the right time for a raid on the PIC. Anyone who hadn’t headed off on holiday would have been absorbed in the Steinhoff implosion. There was little chance of being interrogated by the usual sharp-eyed activists.
Presumably emboldened by the ease with which he had siphoned off the R4.3bn and fearful that Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency might close the PIC’s disbursement window, Survé rushed in for a huge top-up just four months later. This time it was spotted. The media pointed out some of the more bizarre aspects of the "unicorn" proposals, prompting the CIPC to take a closer look, which in turn ended with the JSE being obliged to reverse its earlier approval.
That is not how things should work, and with any luck the new board will ensure that’s not how it works in future. Certainly anyone who knows Irene Charnley or Maria Ramos might prefer to take their chances with a tight-fisted bank manager. There will have to be continued scope for financing black industrialists, but that shouldn’t mean a vigorous business plan is not essential.
Problems of governance and oversight are not restricted to the public sector. The private sector is also in a mess; it’s as though everyone in a position of responsibility has gone feral. While that cannot be blamed on the PIC, it is well placed to halt the rot.
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