‘The Post Office of Tomorrow’ is yesterday’s dream – ANC keeps wolves at bay

The wolves are hungry. Soon blood sacrifices will have to be made. 

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) that have been leeching off the fiscus for 30 years will have to privatise or close. State finances are low and declining rapidly.

But this week, with a characteristic lack of urgency, the government gazetted an inquiry by the Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) into the “regulations on the conveyance of mail”, in other words, the rules governing the operations of the South African Post Office (Sapo).

The inquiry is scheduled to last for two years. Two years to examine an entity that last year went into business rescue with accumulated losses of R19 billion, R12 billion in liabilities, and is losing more than R2 billion a year.

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Ill-fated efforts

Sapo’s business rescue plans have drawn nothing like the scrutiny and scepticism that met Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan’s ill-fated efforts to get South African Airways (SAA) back into the air. The rescue practitioners have assured Communication and Digital Technology Minister Mondli Gungubele that at an initial cost of R3.8 billion, they will breathe new life into Sapo.

The slogan is “The Post Office of Tomorrow” and this will involve “new digital products”, the details of which the minister won’t disclose because they’re “commercially sensitive”. 

The rescue squad reported that there were 894 “active” post office branches and 129 “non-active” ones – premises padlocked by landlords because of the failure to pay rent – to give a total of 1 023.

Their plan was to close 420 of them. Of Sapo’s 12 640 employees, 6 000 will be retrenched.

Already, political pressure has changed these projections.

Only 1 724 employees will be retrenched and last week, Gungubele said branch closures would be limited to 235.

It is difficult to exaggerate the state of Sapo’s dysfunction.

Its 2023 annual report said there were 5.26 million undelivered items, up by two-thirds from 2022, but Sapo’s delivery fleet now numbers only 88 vehicles.

International parcels dropped from 2.9 billion in 2022 to 685 million. 

There were 4 186 “crime incidents” at post offices – my local post office at one stage was averaging more than one armed robbery a month.

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Eating Sapo’s lunch

In this, the same year that Sapo was provisionally liquidated and the auditor-general issued a disclaimer on its financials, Sapo could find only two positive bits of news to highlight in its report. It proudly announced the continuation of its programme to deliver reading material to schools and children’s reading clubs and the minting of a Road to Democracy postage stamp.

There was one brief moment of hope for Sapo when its former CEO, Mark Barnes, made a buyout offer. This would have revolved around growing the Sapo subsidiary, Postbank, into a fully fledged financial institution.

However, Barnes’ approach was scornfully dismissed and Postbank has been hived off as a separate SOE.

In the meantime, everyone is eating Sapo’s lunch.

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Dysfunctional post box

State grant recipients can now, more conveniently and safely, get their money directly into their bank accounts or collect it from terminals in major shopping and retail chains.

Sapo’s dysfunctional post box service also has private sector alternatives.

The one area where Sapo is fighting a desperate rearguard action is that of courier deliveries.

Four years ago, backed by Icasa, Sapo tried to close down its competitors by resorting to an old post office regulation – previously enforced – that gives it the sole right to deliver any item weighing less than a kilogram. 

The courier companies man- aged to stall the threat in the courts and the government went off to lick its wounds.

It was scheduled to “make a determination” on the exclusivity issue – which also forbids private sector roadside deliveries and address boxes – at the end of this month.

Instead of delivering that determination, the government has now appointed the two-year Icasa inquiry.

Such elaborate ANC machinations to avoid reality are doomed.

The money to keep Sapo afloat is simply not there. Nor for that matter, SAA, Transnet, Portnet and a host of other nonfunctioning SOEs.

At the moment, the ANC doesn’t care. It’s working to a two-month horizon.

It just wants to stall any further bad news and anger and keep the wolves at bay until after May 29.