
The only surprise is that it has taken this long to grasp the nettle.
We know that our SOEs, with the exception perhaps of Telkom, are not just appallingly overstaffed and over-paid but that the levels of competency in many areas, especially technical, are parlous due to an insistence on cadre deployment.
It is not just the SOEs that fall into this category: much the same can be said of the public service. Simply put - and disregarding the politics that underpins it - we literally can no longer afford these ill-run SOEs.
SAA is the first testing ground of the government’s resolve to apply Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s dictum that we must start cutting our cloth to suit our purse. Many would argue that SAA is a vanity we neither need nor want, unlike Eskom.