NUMSA lashes Gordhan over Mango sale
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has labelled Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan as “the most hostile minister to the working class”.
The union wants Gordhan to finalise the sale of Mango Airlines.
Earlier this week, the High Court in Pretoria denied Gordhan leave to appeal on the finalisation of the sale of Mango Airways.
The Department of Public Enterprises applied for leave to appeal against a previous judgment, which ordered the minister to make a decision on the department’s support of the sale.
The judgment, which was handed down on 6 September, gave Gordhan 30 days to confirm whether the sale could go through or not. If the sale goes through, Mango will be wholly owned by a private equity partner and will no longer be owned by SAA, and the DPE will cease to be the shareholder.
"NUMSA welcomes the humiliating defeat suffered by Gordhan in court," says NUMSA’s national spokesperson, Phakamile Hlubi-Majola.
"NUMSA was involved in this matter because we have members at Mango.Even though they have been retrenched, we negotiated with the Business Rescue Practitioner that workers at Mango would get preferential re-employment, when the airline takes off.
"This case is a victory for the union because it protects the interests of our members and protects the future of the airline.
"Gordhan does not care that workers, the airline and the preferred bidder are in an indefinite limbo because of his reckless decisions."
Hlubi-Majola says Gorhan's actions are irrational.
"The minister who has built his reputation on ‘corruption busting’ is deliberately wasting taxpayer money on futile, costly and frivolous court applications instead of making the decision to finalise the sale," she says.
"Gordhan is showing that he is a hypocrite. In the media, he pretends to care about good governance, but his actions do not match up with his words. He has single-handedly destroyed thousands of jobs. SA Express, SAA, Eskom, Transnet and Denel have all collapsed or are collapsing under his watch.
"There is not a single entity under his portfolio which is doing well. He is managing the most strategic portfolio which is directly tasked with growing the economy, but his failures are destroying the economy.
"It is clear from the latest court outcome that he is likely to lose at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) if he tries to appeal there as well.”
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