SAA Sale to Equity Partner Takatso is nothing less than a fraudulent transaction by a minister to support his former colleagues at treasury and PIC, and throw a javelin for himself

Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) which are mostly government agencies, usually do not fund privately owned airline businesses and at most they support airlines that work in partnership with Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) which supports State Owned Companies (SOCs).

DFIs finance is therefore usually injected for establishing new capacity, upgrades, maintenance and expansions. In the SAA/Takatso fiasco, the DPE dumps shares for R51, assuming each share costs R1 (which is impossible considering the underlying assets of SAA unlike its subsidiaries like Mango which until its demise virtually had no assets besides its licenses).

Furthermore, government through the DPE will be injecting more than R3 billion of fresh capital to SAA, the very same R3 billion that SAA was promised would be injected in working capital by Takatso over five years.

Why is Minister Gordhan not asking Takatso to pay R3 billion for the acquisition of its 51% shares, because then the capital would have to come up front and not later as currently structured? The answer is simple, the R3 billion will never be seen nor ever be injected by Takatso after the share sale of R51 goes through. It is fraud

Statement by:
Mr Bantu Holomisa
UDM President