The Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says state capture severely damaged South African Airways (SAA). He was delivering a keynote address in Cape Town at the relaunch of the airline’s direct flights from the Mother City and Johannesburg to Brazil.
The flight from Cape Town International Airport will take off on Tuesday next week, while the Johannesburg one will leave on the sixth of next month.
Despite the good news, the airliner has not submitted its audited financial statements in Parliament for several years.
In the past 10 years, SAA has received bailouts amounting to R40 billion.
Gordhan says the airline has finally risen from the ashes of State Capture after nearly being liquidated.
“Most of these five years are about the State Capture years. So this new team has found great difficulty in finding documents, in being able to put together financial statements with enough evidence to satisfy the Auditor-General, so you destroy something, you don’t keep proper records for five years and suddenly you’ve got to produce them, it’s not easy.”
A proudly South African moment. The relaunch of South African Airways (SAA) first intercontinental flight to São Paulo, Brazil.@flysaa pic.twitter.com/hAPjVBNgtI
— Ellis Mnyandu (@Ellis_Mnyandu) October 26, 2023
VIDEO | South African Airways relaunch:
