South Africa is truly in a sad state of affairs when it comes to our state-owned enterprises.
We have the national carrier - South African Airways - being unable to submit its 2014/15 financials, with the deadline being pushed out several times. The carrier is now in danger of losing the Hong Kong route, according to news reports I heard.
By the time it actually tables its figures, it will be time to put this year’s set of numbers in front of Parliament.
Hardly our national pride and joy. And this comes after several rather dubious contracts which really put SAA on centre-stage when they came to light.
And then there’s Eskom, which is having one heck of a battle with the National Treasury over coal contracts it has with Tegeta Exploration, owned by the Gupta family’s Oakbay Investments.
Now Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown has instructed Eskom to hand over a 172-page report to the National Treasury - a report the custodian of SA’s money has tried for months to get out of the power utility.
Eskom is also under fire for delays in signing a 20-year power purchase agreement with Redstone Solar Thermal Power for a 100-megawatt solar project in Postmasburg in the Northern Cape.
It is now arguing that the rand’s weakening against the dollar has escalated the costs of the Northern Cape solar plant by billions of rands, and now it’s raising concerns about the cost of renewable energy with Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
Not that escalating costs seem to have bothered Eskom in the past; just ask energy expert Chris Yelland.
Not to be outdone in this bizarre battle for the best of the worst is Denel, which says it will fight the National Treasury’s efforts to block a deal to market its products in Asia with yet another company that has been tied to the Gupta family.
In case anyone has missed this, the Guptas are friends with President Jacob Zuma. And apparently are leaving the country - although they did hotly deny this rumour some months ago.
Quite a mess, isn’t it?
Fall on sword
So, who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs?
As far as I’m concerned, we should look at South Africa as if it was a large conglomerate with disparate business units. Sort of like a Bidvest.
Except that some of these entities are needed to literally keep the lights on, and others are apparently just there to make money.
Each business unit has a CEO, and that CEO reports to a hub chairman - ministers. The ministers, in turn, report to SA Inc’s CEO - President Jacob Zuma. And Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is CFO and responsible for counting pennies.
That’s an awfully complicated company structure, even if we do simplify it and neglect to bring in a whole host of other stakeholders and powers-that-be.
What isn’t complicated is that South Africans in all shapes and sizes are shareholders - from the chap who washes cars to earn bread money, to the CEO of our most successful company, to our future generation of leaders.
We own all of this, and we put people in charge who put other people in charge of lower rungs on the ladder, who elect company heads.
I guess when there are that many cooks involved, it’s easy to blame everyone and no-one when the soup turns out to have a bitter taste.
And, perhaps, therein lies the problem. The blame game is a neverending circle where blame just gets shuffled aside and no heads ever fall, and no-one falls on their sword.
And until we start holding our leaders accountable when they waste our money, delay for several years in bringing projects online, or run a commercial operation at a loss, we will pay the price.
And that means, ultimately, we’re to blame.
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or Business Report @busrep.
IOL