Dr Duncan du Bois writes: “You need to correct the claim that SAA has been privatised. It has not. The Takatso/Harith crowd are ANC cronies. Moleketi having been an ANC deputy under Mbeki while his wife was a useless Cabinet minister. Holding a 33% stake means that the ANC govt can block any changes in the management of the consortium. And the money involved is coming from the PIC, so again, a govt controlled situation. The whole thing is a scam. It is simply in-house ANC privatisation.”
Duncan’s email is one of a number to hit my inbox expressing similar sentiments. It saddens me that this fake news has been so widely distributed that even members of the BizNews community have been sucked into the net. So what’s the reality? For starters, Takatso is not a group of ANC-cronies – tarring new SAA CEO Gidon Novick with that brush is preposterous. Ditto chairman Tshepo Mahloele, who was in the same FirstRand “class of” as Michael Jordaan and is an independent entrepreneur – a fact I can attest to as he is the only outside shareholder in BizNews. Mahloele is also the executive chairman of Arena, whose titles like the Sunday Times, Business Day and Financial Mail reflect their owner’s independent mindset. Mahloele founded Harith, whose chairman is, indeed, former deputy finance minister Jabu Moleketi. But Moleketi retired from politics in 2009 and his wife Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi was a widely respected cabinet minister (hardly “useless” as suggested). She retired from the cabinet in 2008. The PIC is NOT investing a cent in the consortium, a fact it confirmed in a statement yesterday. As for the rest of the allegations – these are fabrications with malicious intent. Whew. Do the fake news purveyors have no shame?
