The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has accused Minister of State Enterprises Pravin Gordhan of presiding over state capture two.
This comes after the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, denied Gordhan leave to appeal the finalisation of the sale of Mango Airways this past week.
The Department of Public Enterprises had applied for leave to appeal against a previous judgment, which ordered the minister to make a decision on the department’s support of the sale.
Numsa has criticised the minister over the sale of SAA to Takatso Consortium, with the union describing Gordhan as being hostile to the working class.
Even though the minister denied having refused to provide Parliament with key documents on the Takatso Consortium deal last week, Numsa says the minister has withheld key information from the portfolio committee on public enterprises.
“The public enterprises parliamentary portfolio committee has unanimously agreed that it cannot provide unqualified support for the transaction for SAA to be sold to the Takatso Consortium.
“Furthermore, Numsa has noted that the committee has decided to subpoena Minister Gordhan for his refusal to co-operate with the committee in its investigation into the deal involving the Takatso consortium,” the union said in statement on Sunday.
Numsa secretary general Irvin Jim said that last Wednesday, the parliamentary committee had met to consider the evidence and the allegations of corruption which the former director-general of SAA, Kgathatso Tlhakudi had submitted to Parliament.
“Gordhan’s refusal to provide the committee with two crucial documents has meant that it is unable to finalise its investigation into allegations of irregularities. The documents which are outstanding are the shortlisted entities after the final determination was made, and the sale and purchase agreement.”
Jim added that Numsa had been vindicated by the minister’s recent position on the SAA/Takatso deal which has been criticised for not being in the interests of the citizens of this country.
“Numsa is vindicated because Gordhan has proven that we were right about him all along. Gordhan is presiding over State Capture 2.0 through the sale of SAA. The airline was sold for R51 in a process that remains shrouded in secrecy, even though this is a state-owned entity, which means that as the public, we have every right to demand and receive detailed information on this deal.”
Jim said Numsa wanted to the minister fired for the dodgy Takatso deal and the level of secrecy surrounding the transaction.
He accused Gordhan of having contributed to the collapse of SOEs.
“There are numerous reasons why Gordhan must be fired. In his tenure as minister of SOEs, he has collapsed every single one of them. His disastrous track record, coupled with the dodgy SAA deal means that his dismissal is way overdue.
“But it seems the governing party is too cowardly to act against a minister as grossly incompetent as Gordhan, and one wonders why? He does as he pleases and there are no consequences,” he said.
On Thursday, however, the minister refuted claims of refusing to provide details of the deal to the committee.
Gordhan said that any assertions that the proposed purchase of the 51% shareholding in SAA by the Takatso Consortium was not conducted in a transparent and fair process were malicious and false.
“The Department of Public Enterprises has done everything according to the prescripts of the law. Any attempts to continue casting aspersions about the integrity of the transaction are meant to sidetrack the public from the hard work that has gone into saving SAA and reviving it into a financially sound and viable national carrier that we can all be proud of,” Gordhan said.
The Star