Africa’s largest money manager plans to appoint private contractors to help change its culture after a slew of suspensions and resignations left the State firm without a chair, board or CEO.

The Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages about $220-billion in public pensions, is looking for service providers to “design and facilitate and implement the culture-transformation interventions” that were identified as necessary in an internal survey, and for human resources to help implement them over a five-year period, according to a notice on its website.

Among the deliverables are “fostering psychological safety and trust, including facilitation of the employee-healing process” and the “facilitation of courageous conversations”.

The fund manager has lurched from one crisis to the next over the past decade. The latest culminated in the resignation of chairperson David Masondo — who also serves as South Africa’s deputy finance minister — after a clash with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana over the decision to suspend PIC CEO Patrick Dlamini.

The disagreement escalated, resulting in several directors resigning their posts, and eventually in Masondo’s own resignation ahead of a meeting in which he was set to be removed by Godongwana.

A 2020 judicial commission of inquiry chaired by retired Judge Lex Mpati found widespread governance issues at the PIC and made several recommendations, including that the fund appoint a professional and independent investment executive as chairman. This would require legislative changes that haven’t been effected.