JUSTICE MALALA: They brought SAA to its knees — why are they still free?

I have flown from Joburg to Cape Town four times in the past three weeks. I have also done two return trips from Joburg to Durban and to Gqeberha. In all instances, I have flown with the excellent, on-time, friendly, clean and efficient FlySafair.

Just five years ago I would probably have flown half of those trips with SAA, our “national carrier”. Walking through OR Tambo International Airport used to be a parade through SAA’s prowess: it flew to more destinations than any other carrier; it covered routes private airlines would not touch; it oiled the economy; it brought the farmers of Upington to Joburg; and it ensured that foreign investors got to Bloemfontein.

Even with such responsibilities, in the period before 2012 it managed to eke out a small profit while providing jobs to thousands of permanent, contract and support staff. Now, headlines about the airline are speculations about its future. FlySafair has eaten SAA’s cake. The queues at the various boarding gates point to it. Where SAA once dominated, this not-so-new player now leads.

I don’t know if SAA will ever come back from its destruction, but its website’s “About Us” section is ominous. It tells the story of the airline from its formation in 1934 but ends abruptly with this paragraph: “In 2005 SAA became the first non-Saudi airline allowed to fly to Medina to carry Muslim pilgrims going on Haj. On 29 November 2007, we became the proud official carrier of the South African rugby team, the Springboks, as part of a sponsorship agreement between the airline and South African Rugby.”

After that, there is nothing. The builders of the website are correct to be circumspect. In December 2007 Jacob Zuma became president of the ANC, and the demise of SAA began. Zuma appointed ministers who would do his bidding with regards to the carrier, appointed cronies to the board of directors and watched as the airline was destroyed.

It is the story not just of SAA, but of Eskom, Denel and many others

The Zondo commission said in its report that the SAA board’s former chair, the Zuma associate and appointee Dudu Myeni, sabotaged the airline from within via a mixture of “negligence, incompetence and deliberate corrupt intent”. It said Myeni and other high-ranking SAA officials should be investigated for fraud and corruption during her tenure between December 2012 and October 2017.

Zondo recommended that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) investigate Yakhe Kwinana, a former board member of SAA and the ex-chair of SAA Technical, for corruption. The commission said she had probably received “corrupt payments [that] were made in exchange for decisions, in which Kwinana was involved, that benefited the entity that made the payments”. In a word, she was taking kickbacks.

Zuma appointed Malusi Gigaba as minister of public enterprises, overseeing state-owned enterprises such as SAA and Eskom. Gigaba appointed as his adviser a man called Siyabonga Mahlangu. This adviser then set up a meeting at the Guptas’ house in Saxonwold, Joburg, where former SAA acting CEO Vuyisile Kona was offered between R100,000 and R500,000 by Tony Gupta to secure the national carrier’s turnaround plan tender for the Gupta family’s business.

These are just some of the titbits of the story of how SAA was collapsed by greed and corruption. It is the story not just of SAA, but of Eskom, Denel and many others.

So as I walked through OR Tambo Airport this week, wondering at the destruction of SAA, I asked myself: why aren’t these people in court or in jail? Gigaba has been elected to the ANC national executive committee. Myeni is deeply involved in the JG Zuma Foundation. Mahlangu, the last I heard, was an executive at Telkom.

Why aren’t they on trial or in jail? A whole institution has collapsed, hundreds or thousands of jobs lost, billions of rand in value destroyed, and the people responsible just continue with their lives as if nothing has happened. It is now more than a year since Zondo’s report on SAA was released. What has happened to the charges that the NPA was going to bring against these criminals? Why is there no action? Has the prosecuting agency collapsed?

South Africa will stay in the rut it is in if such impunity continues. In fact, things will get worse.