Cadres block any success at SAA while Safair thrives

As you sit, powerless, in the load shedding which Eskom promised would return only at the end of this week, there is a simple example of how a company should be run when it is not left to cadre deployees from the ruling party.

Private low-cost airline Safair has just been recognised with a global award for being the best low-cost carrier in the world in terms of its on-time arrival performance.

Handed out by international aviation data and analytics company Cirium, the accolade was arrived at after rigorous independent analysis. So, this was no sweetheart prize.

What makes the award all the more noticeable is that it has been won on the back of a huge expansion of the airline, following the collapse of South African Airways (SAA) and its subsidiary Mango… and from the closure of Comair’s British Airways franchise and its low-cost option, kulula.com.

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The carriers which crashed and burned did not, like SAA, have taxpayer money to bail them out after they were hard hit by the Covid-initiated collapse of the travel industry.

SAA 2.0, as cynics in the airline business are calling it, is probably still being suckled at the teat of the taxpayer, as it boasts about reopening routes and acquiring new aircraft.

Most of the latter are on expensive “wet leases” (deals which include aircraft and crew) – but the details are not known.

Perhaps that is because the airline and its responsible minister, Pravin Gordhan, have refused to publish financial statements for more than five years.

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Nor is there clarity on the supposed deal by the Takatso consortium to buy SAA.

SAA, it now appears, was nothing more than a vast feeding trough for the comrades and their hangers-on.

Moral of the story: remove the cadres, let sensible businesspeople run the company – and watch the awards roll in.