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The South African Communist Party welcomes the Cabinet’s decision to scrap the controversial deal that would have culminated in the private commercial interests organised as Takatso consortium walking away with 51 per cent of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), the South African Airways (SAA). That the deal was not transparent is only one problem. The other problems include the fact that it was destined to benefit private commercial interests at the expense of full SAA ownership by the state on behalf of the people as a whole. The deal was untenable and acceptable. 

The SACP calls on the Cabinet to go further. We need a thorough investigation into exactly what happened and how it happened. The Cabinet must take steps to protect SAA’s intellectual property, which has now been exposed to private commercial interests, and ensure adequate recapitalisation of SAA and its full ownership by the state on behalf of the people as a whole. 

“Both within the Alliance and publicly, the SACP fought against the agenda to privatise SAA”, said Solly Mapaila, SACP General Secretary.  We were, and are still, against the Department of Public Enterprises – note, not private enterprise – conveying 51 per cent of the nearly 90 years old public entity to private commercial interests. Instead of serving private enterprise interests through privatisation, the Department of Public Enterprises must help turn around public enterprises to thrive. It must be the custodian of the public economy, build and grow it. 

Let us recall. The Department of Public Enterprises was alone in pushing the untenable direction. The agenda to insinuate private commercial interests and competition in public enterprises or public infrastructure networks is a key part of the tenderisation of the state and the neoliberal structural reforms adopted by the National Treasury from an IMF- and World Bank-backed OECD template in 2019. It was in line with the National Treasury’s widely discredited fiscal austerity policy, rejected by the majority of our nation, the working class and poor. 

Austerity included curtailing state investment in SOEs, calling it “bailouts”. Dating back to the last decade of the apartheid regime, this fiscal policy path forced the affected entities into financial and operational crises. These entities were corporatised and, thereafter, their orchestrated crises became a launching pad to mobilise politically motivated attacks against them. Globally, this was part and parcel of the agenda for the powers that be, backed by the bourgeoisie, who dominate editorial content in private commercial media, to privatise the affected public entities. State capture contributed in no small measure to the crises into which public enterprises were forced, as documented by the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture through its report. All this must be dealt with decisively, including by holding accountable those responsible.

Issued by the South African Communist Party