LETTER: ANC played the country

The ANC government once had the opportunity to partner SAA with Emirates Airlines, a serious, professional, established, credible, solidly financed, reputationally rock-solid airline with an outstanding international reputation (“SAA’s R3bn deal with Takatso falls apart”, March 13).

But it spurned this opportunity at a time when SAA still had some semblance of reputation and value. Instead, a “deal of sorts” that could never be fully disclosed as it was so shaky, was announced with Takatso, a company with virtually no balance sheet, track record or industry experience. The principle of partnering with a credible private sector partner is and was sound; partnering with a Mickey Mouse operation never was, and never is.

The ANC and Pravin Gordhan have played the entire country — indeed the entire aviation industry — in the most amateurish of ways as fools, and have now created a situation where the only possible solution is to go cap in hand and ask that the once proud SAA, the second oldest international airline in the world, be plugged into the rump of Emirates or Qatar.

Well done, Zuma and Dudu Myeni — yet another proud SA asset sacrificed to ego and corruption, added to Eskom, Transnet, Prasa, the SABC and so many more.

Jon Quirk
Via BusinessLIVE

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