Minister rewards poor performing SAPO Board Members with new term

21 April 2023

“It is untenable and simply mind boggling, that the Minister can look at the woeful state of SAPO and find it fitting to reappoint not only the current members of the board, but the very Chairperson who should have been steering the ship all along.”

This week the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, not only stated in no uncertain terms that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service would not be welcome in South Africa, unless 30% of Space X’s equity was owned by previously disadvantaged groups, but has now seen fit to reappoint the chairperson and three other board members of the South African Post Office SOC Ltd (SAPO) for another term.

SAPO was provisionally liquidated on 9 February 2023 after failing to pay one of its many creditors. It is alleged that SAPO owes a total of R4.4 billion to various creditors, including its own employees for medical aid benefits and pension contributions.

The DA was told this morning that the case lodged with the Hawks against the Management of SAPO who had fraudulently taken hundreds of millions of rands of medical aid and pension contributions from salaries, and then not paid it over to Medipos and the pension fund, is at an advanced stage.

Since 2019, the board has overseen R9.2 billion worth of assets wiped off SAPO’s balance sheets. In 2019, assets exceeded it liabilities by R5.19 billion. Today, SAPO’s liabilities now exceed its assets by R4.08 billion.

It is untenable and simply mind boggling, that the Minister can look at the woeful state of SAPO and, despite these facts, decide that it would be fitting to reappoint not only the current members of the board, but the very Chairperson who has overseen the financial collapse of SAPO as well.

The Minister has acted irrationally and unreasonably in reappointing the four members of the board and such appointment does not comply with section 11(4)(a) of the SAPO SOC Ltd Act (Act 22 of 2011) in that a board member must have proven skills, knowledge, qualifications and expertise in the following:

Financial Management

Governance compliance

Project management

Risk management

Given SAPO’s current financial status, these four board members fall woefully short of the required competence necessary, and the DA will call on each and every one of them to redeem themselves and resign on their own accord.

Lastly, given this brazen decision by the Minister, the DA will be demanding that the Minister appear before the Portfolio Committee to give reasons for his decision.

Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, 21 April 2023