Zondo report: How Dudu Myeni drove SAA into the ground

South African Airways (SAA) ex-chairperson Dudu Myeni’s mixture of “negligence, incompetence, corrupt intent, mismanagement” and greed left the national airline dismantled and ineffective, according to the report from the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

The report spared no one as it heavily implicated Myeni alongside her allies’, former president Jacob Zuma, former board member Yakhe Kwinana, former ministers Malusi Gigaba and Lynne Brown, advocate Nontsasa Memela and many others including external service providers Nedbank and Standard Bank.

The report detailed the fraud and corruption which led to the “ultimate collapse of governance at the national carrier”, and questioned watchdog institutions and functionaries such as auditors and independent non-executive members of the board.

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According to the report, SAA declined during the tenure of Myeni, while state capture thrived at the national airline and its associated companies, South African Airways Technical (SAAT) and South African Express (SA Express).

Among Myeni’s actions noted in the report were her misrepresentations to the minister of public enterprises in 2013 on the issues of the Pembroke Capital transaction.

Myeni sent at least two letters to the minister purporting to communicate board resolutions when they were her decisions alone.

“It was put to Myeni during her evidence that she had knowingly misrepresented to the minister of public enterprises in 2013 that the board of SAA had resolved to change the Pembroke transaction in circumstances where she knew that they had not done so and that the misrepresentation cost SAA in the order of R800 million,” the report said.

While Myeni and Kwinana were cited in the report more times than any others, the report also revealed that former ministers Gigaba and Brown turned a blind eye to corruption and fraud despite many reports against Myeni’s conduct, which ultimately led to at least 12 board members resigning due to intimidation and fear.

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Myeni operated SAA “under a cloud of fear, intimidation, secrecy and paranoia, when a public entity should be operated transparently and with accountability to the South African people who fund its operations”, the report said.

The inquiry found that Myeni and Kwinana in their respective powerful positions, as well as co-board members of SAA, exerted total control, while making decisions in their personal interests and opposed to what was in the companies’ best interests.

“The management style and approach of both Myeni and Kwinana enabled acts of fraud and corruption to engulf the entities.

“When this type of decision-making takes place in a few instances within a state-owned enterprise, it may be possible to view them as isolated criminal acts. However, when this type of decision-making predominates and fraud and corruption become the order of the day, something else is at play.

“It was then that state capture had taken hold of the entity because it had now been transformed into an entity that benefitted the few rather than one that served the people.”

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za