A WEE DRAM
CHRIS GILMOUR: Shooting down all justifications for the folly that is SAA
When Russell Loubser, the former long-time CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange walked away from the board of South African Airways (SAA), you know it had to be bad. Loubser is up for the toughest of challenges and transformed an incestuous trading den into a world-class stock exchange. But SAA was beyond the pale for him — as it is for most South Africans, who wonder why this postapartheid state-owned dinosaur persists, constantly crawling to its shareholder with begging bowl outstretched. Free Market Foundation director Leon Louw says SAA is probably the only state-owned enterprise that does absolutely no good for SA. "We could argue Eskom, SABC, Alexkor have some benefit to the people, but SAA offers no advantage whatsoever. It’s the most extreme, obnoxious and obscene example of redistribution of money from the poor to the rich."Louw explains that constant SAA bail-outs are not a taxpayer expense, as is often described, but rather a reallocation of money. "We do not go to the ...
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