South African Airways (SAA) CEO Vuyani Jarana has been offered a R100 000.00 wager that his three-year turnaround plan for the national airline will fail.
Leon Louw, executive director of the Free Market Foundation (FMF) is willing to place the wager against SAA being in profit by 31 March 2021, the timeframe stated in Jarana’s plan.
This excludes any privatisation or business rescue proceedings – both of which Louw believes are possibly too late, and which have been ruled out by Jarana himself.
The condition for this wager is that, when Jarana pays the charity, it will be from his own money and not from public funds – according to Louw, this offer Jarana personal “skin in the game”.
The FMF states that the wager is not a PR stunt, but an attempt to illicit serious intent about the abuse of public funds.
This comes in the wake of a new call for South African taxpayers to fund SAA by another R22-billion.
Louw believes the turnaround plan is doomed to failure, and the money spent on it will be squandered. He cites the nine previous turnaround plans put forward by eight CEOs, and the R46-billion so far sent on bailing the airline out.
“The FMF has long been vocal on the solution,” the organisation states. “It is clearly too late for turnaround plans, business rescue or privatisation – although attempting the latter two is better than persisting with the status quo. SAA is broke and unfixable.
“The only realistic option left is to close SAA down in a planned and predictable process so that all vested interests – customers, staff, unions, suppliers, creditors and more – know what will happen, how they will be affected and what plans are in place to optimise the process and minimise the pain.
“Let’s take the political fear out of closing down SAA.”