To those with a keen interest in the power politics of individuals in cabinet, finance minister Tito Mboweni’s recent tweets on the SAA saga paint an interesting picture of the prevailing dynamics in the executive.
In a series of tweets, Mboweni, who is known to be against government pouring more money into the ailing SAA, suggested that he had abandoned that position to fall in line with his cabinet colleagues.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan in particular has been unequivocal about government’s responsibility to assist SAA, together with other partners.
Gordhan further announced last week that “The money issue from government side will be resolved in the coming weeks, in meetings due, but commitment has been settled.”
To the opposition DA and many other commentators, this meant that Mboweni had capitulated and sacrificed the public purse for political expediency.
Whatever your interpretation of the politics at play, what remains deeply problematic is that the government has demonstrated tremendous zeal to save SAA but not so much to resuscitate our collapsed rail infrastructure.
Transport minister Fikile Mbalula last week announced a new plan to curb ongoing vandalism and infrastructure ruin on the rail network. The plan ought to be driven by intelligence gathering and analysis as well as the insourcing of security services by rail agency Prasa.
What is unclear so far, however, is how the plan will be funded.
Indeed, Prasa, like SAA, has been a symbol of rampant corruption and mismanagement for several years, thus eroding a crucial and affordable mode of transport for working-class commuters who have borne the brunt of our economic crisis.
The department of public enterprises has argued that saving SAA is not a vanity project, as critics suggest. It states, for example, that it is significant for a tourism country such as ours to have a national airline than depend entirely on the machinations of foreign players.
It further pleads a case for micro economies in Gauteng’s East Rand area whose job opportunities are interconnected to SAA operations. These may indeed be true but remain unconvincing to justify the cost of saving SAA.
Equally significant is what message government is sending by bending over backwards to save a nearly defunct airline as opposed to a rail network which carries the majority of working-class South Africans commuting to make a living.
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