For many, former public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan’s death on Friday brought back memories of his disastrous attempt to privatise state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Some unions and and members of the public sector remembered Gordhan as the minister who destroyed people’s livelihood.
Immediately after Gordhan had announced that he would not be returning as minister, DA spokesperson on public enterprises Mimmy Gondwe said Gordhan had capped a disastrous tenure that has left a trail of destruction in the SOE sector.
Gondwe said Gordhan had squandered the public goodwill that he had had at the beginning of his tenure as minister. He had chosen to pander to the ANC and, in the process, had failed to clean up the mess created by the criminal state capture project.
“Perhaps a serious indictment to his legacy is that he has left many SOEs in a much worse shape than he found them, with some on the verge of collapse.
“When former Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter, exposed the existence of deep-seated corruption at Eskom, perpetuated by a labyrinth of politically connected criminal networks and costing the entity R1 billion a month, Gordhan decided to close ranks with his ANC comrades. He chose to victimise De Ruyter rather than ask law enforcement agencies to investigate the merits of the corruption allegations.
“Gordhan stood idly by as Eskom lurched from one crisis to another. Since his appointment to the public enterprises portfolio, South Africans have spent more days in the dark than at any other time since the crisis began 17 years ago.
“By failing to decisively deal with the load-shedding crisis, Gordhan should part of the blame for South Africa’s struggling economy, loss of jobs, closure of businesses and attendant decline in private sector investment,” Gondwe said.
A typical example of the failed deals was the Takatso transaction with SAA which was later cancelled because of the public outcry.
In one of his writings on privatisation, editor of “Business Maverick” Tim Cohen detailed how the word “privatisation” was taboo at the time.
Cohen said the failed “privatisation” attempt by the state fell squarely on Gordhan.
“At each stage of the process, Gordhan had crucial decisions to make and he consistently made the wrong ones. That’s easy to say in retrospect; success in governing is often a marginal affair,” he added.
The Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) was appointed to identify possible buyers, which it duly did.
“It’s a safe guess that the demands of the potential partners were steep. At the very least, they would want more than 50% of the equity; nobody is going to take over a state asset in such deep doo-doo without control. It’s inconceivable that RMB would not have told Gordhan that.
“At this point, in my opinion, Gordhan should have folded. One of the first rules of Texas hold ’em poker is that if your whole cards are not of high value, run away, because the chances are someone else at the table is holding better cards.
“But Gordhan was of the view that the government could and should retain a majority stake. So, all the work RMB did was for nought and a new solution had to be found.”
The Star