Yakhe Kwinana: ‘I had no reason to run away from SAA’

The former chairperson of the SAA audit and risk committee implicated in the #SAAEmails, Yakhe Kwinana, has told The Citizen that she stands by every single email she wrote in which she appears to be interfering in the day-to-day operations of the ailing state-owned national flag carrier.

Asked about her reaction to the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse’s (Outa’s) assertion that it can prove that she was a “delinquent director”, Kwinana said: “According to my knowledge, Outa does not have powers to declare a person (or at least me) a delinquent director.”

In one of the purported emails, an exasperated-sounding Kwinana wrote to the former chief procurement officer, Dr Masimba Dahwa, with Dudu Myeni copied on the same email: “Tomorrow we are going to Durban and have invited successful service providers. How is the procedure expected to go. What is [the] expectation? Do we have a formal programme.”

In another email released as part of the #SAAEmails by Forensics for Justice to The Citizen, Kwinana informs Dahwa that she will be purchasing a holding company to hold shares on behalf of “work stream” companies. This appears to relate a shelf company that was purchased with an intention of being allocated 15% of the procurement spend ring-fenced for black-owned jet fuel suppliers.

READ MORE: #SAAEmails: I will be buying a holding company, writes board member

She also claimed to have appointed lawyer Peter Tshisevhe, who was at the time registered on the SAA database of legal advisers but was not yet a board member, to help to set up the company and sign on behalf of the “holding company” with both Engen and SAA.

Tshisevhe, a mergers and acquisitions legal specialist and now a board member, accused Kwinana of lying as he said he had never received a “mandate from SAA and there was never such a board resolution” to allocate the shares.

In her resignation letter addressed to the then finance minister Pravin Gordhan, Kwinana said she was resigning from her non-executive position of the SAA board as the airline was facing bankruptcy. She denied resigning to avoid facing the consequences of decisions taken by the board of which she was a member.

“Why would I run away? I had, and still have, no reason to run away,” Kwinana retorted.

She also denied having ever pressurised Dr Dahwa to implement irregular procurement decisions, many of them, according to the emails and as corroborated by Tshisevhe, without the board’s approval.

“No, it is not in my nature to harass anyone, including Dr Dahwa. This decision was not irregular at all. I must point out that in fact 15% was a compromise as the board decision was 30%, which is still very low considering that only 2% of SAA procurement spend goes to blacks, who make up 80% of the South African population.

“It is sad that the defenders of the status quo will contact the newspapers like The Citizen to push their agenda of protecting the white monopoly capitalists,” Kwinana wrote to The Citizen.

She further told The Citizen that she stands by every decision the board she was a part of took.

“I do not regret a single decision that I made at SAA to try to empower our black people. What I regret is that I did not enforce the implementation of board decisions by the executives like Dr Dahwa.

“My side of the story is as it is on my emails. I still stand by what is contained therein. It is such a pity that after 23 years of our democracy that black companies are still faced with hurdles in trying to supply jet fuel at SAA. Inene (it is true that) the struggle continues,” she wrote.

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