It’s not complicated: a salary is the reward for employees who satisfactorily perform their duties; a bonus is the reward for performance that exceeds those standards. Yet this simple truth seems to have escaped both the management and board of the state-owned oil company PetroSA. It is also, seemingly, a bridge too far for Tina Joemat-Pettersson, the minister of energy to whom the board reports.In the past three financial years, PetroSA’s bumbling executives have managed to cobble together a truly terrifying R16.7bn in financial losses, from revenues of R54.7bn.Last year, 2015, PetroSA reported the single biggest loss in its history: a mammoth R14.6bn. This year, PetroSA managed to pare this back to a net loss of R449m. So what did these esteemed leaders do? They immediately rewarded themselves with bonuses totalling R17.3m, as the Sunday Times reported this past weekend.This happened even after the board of directors initially said the executives didn’t deserve a cent in bonuses, ...
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