Pretoria - The SAA business rescue process has cost taxpayers R200 million to date, with practitioners Les Mattison and Siviwe Dongwana pocketing a combined R59m despite failing to pay employees’ salaries and battling to turn around the embattled airline.
According to internal documents seen by the Pretoria News, including an email from SAA financial officer Lindsay Olitzki to company secretary Ruth Kibuuka, the lion’s share of the R200m went to law firm Edward Nathann Sonnenbergs (ENS) and other consultants.
Apart from Mattison and Dongwana, ENS was paid R45.4m while other unnamed consultants received R97.3m since December 2019 when Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan placed SAA under business rescue.
In the email, dated January 19, 2021, with the subject “cost of the business rescue as requested by the chair”, Olitzki told Kibuuka to “distribute to the directors” the “fees paid for the business rescue process to date”.
He then gave a breakdown.
Richard Mantu, who speaks for the Department of Public Enterprises, declined to comment on the R200m payment and the reasons for the cost escalations, saying the department’s view on the business rescue process was already public knowledge.
Mattison yesterday referred all enquiries to Dongwana, who failed to respond to calls and written questions sent via WhatsApp.
This comes as the socio-economic lives of at least 1 000 SAA employees and their families deteriorate further, forcing the National Union of Metal Workers of SA (Numsa) and the SA Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) to approach the court last week in a bid to force the airline to pay salaries. The case was postponed to today.
SAA employees have not not been paid since April last year after the pandemic clipped the wings of the airline. A portion of the almost R20 billion allocated by the government has benefited Mattison and Dongwana who have not brought significant change or progress.
The grounding of the airline has taken its toll on employees of SAA and their families, with some from Tshwane saying their lives were in ruins. They added that they found it hard to make ends meet while millions were spent on “experts” who brought no change.
Requesting anonymity for fear of retribution, they spoke of the lives they had to live without the salaries from SAA.
A cabin crew attendant said most of her colleagues had gone back home to live with their parents. About 80% of them could no longer afford the standard of living they had worked hard to attain. She said SAA only communicated with its employees when it was time for them to sign something, or when it wanted to convince them to accept unilateral offers behind the backs of the unions.
Another emotional employee said: “We have been surviving on TERS alone, but that money was only for buying food and paying for electricity. It has ended and we are in deep trouble. These executives do not give a damn about us. They do not communicate with us and they do not even want to sacrifice and at least pay us just a portion of our salaries.
“I am in pain because some of my colleagues from Eastern and Northern Cape were renting decent accommodation in Birchleigh and Norkem Park, so they could be closer to OR Tambo International Airport… but they have now taken their children to squat in some dodgy Kempton Park flats.”
She said the banks and private schools initially tried to understand their plight but eventually did what they were expected to do when people defaulted.
“Cars and houses were repossessed and children who went to private schools are stranded because they cannot go there without money and public schools have already closed their applications.”
One woman said her ex-husband – an employee of SAA – had not been able to support his children and maintain the life he had afforded them and to which they had grown accustomed.
“It was mid last year when he started defaulting, and by the close of school year fees were outstanding by two terms and he was not paying for their upkeep, including basics like their hair and lunch box food.
“Frustrated, I took him to the children’s court, thinking he was just being irresponsible, but there I learnt how he not only had no salary, but that the lack of overseas trips had dried up the surplus money he always had. His savings had gone into paying off his home and car, something the court understood and said was only fair.”
Now she is struggling to get them into a public school that will not need transport, but she did not know where money for uniforms, stationery and even registration would come from, as she herself had run herself into the ground with the unpaid bills.
“I have also taken on the added responsibility of paying for the bond and rates and taxes in addition to my own responsibilities. I am drowning under it all because I cannot do it all on my own salary. It has been hard, and unless he gets his job back it will only get worse,” said the mother.
Another woman said this was not the time for the DA to be arguing that SAA must be closed or privatised unless employees are paid what is due to them in full.
“We are suffocating every day. Our parents and siblings are tired of us because we have asked for assistance for so long they cannot afford to help us anymore. It is as if I could cry when I think about what is happening to us, our children and marriages,” she said.
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said the union had always been opposed to the exorbitant fees paid to the Business Rescue Teams at SAA, “especially because as we speak, SAA has not taken to the skies, and it should have been flying by now if they were following the business rescue plan.
“Meanwhile, the BRT members enrich themselves at our expense, our members have been plunged into poverty and unemployment because of gross incompetence of the Department of Public Enterprise as the shareholder,” she said.
Sacca president Zazi Nsibanyoni-Mugambi said SAA targeted a desperate and vulnerable quarter of the staff and made them sign the agreement behind the backs of the unions.
“The problem now is that those employees who were desperate for some money only received those payments and now it is January and they are not paid again. What SAA and the department failed to understand was that we did not want all the other salaries in cash, it could also be in equity.”
Pretoria News