Teflon+men,+Gleason+Torque

Excerpts from this week’s Torque column
=Teflon man=

How has it become possible for Khaya Ngqula, presently South African Airways (SAA) CEO, to become South Africa’s very own Teflon man? He trails a list of personal disasters that would have shamed anyone else into hiding.

Not Ngqula. He is the man forced to admit publicly, early on during his tenure as CEO of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), that he had secured free furniture from an IDC loan creditor. He undertook then that he wouldn’t do it again.

His apology was accepted by then Trade & Industry Minister, Alec Erwin, who, or so it has transpired, is Ngqula’s patron saint and guardian angel. Many thought it strange that Erwin accepted Ngqula’s //mea culpa// and delivered such a mild reprimand.

But Erwin went on to forgive him repeatedly – for the Saldanha Steel disaster through to the outrageous Mzi Khumalo affair (in which Khumalo rubbished his empowerment partners, the IDC and Harmony Gold, and made off with a fortune), for the allegedly canny sale of the IDC’s stake in Iscor to Indian billionaire, Lakshmi Mittal, and now for the grossly inept handling of the SAA strike which paralysed the airline while millions went down the plughole.

Erwin’s protection service afforded to Ngqula raises questions about the nature of their symbiotic relationship – notably, what does Ngqula have on him?

I don’t know – but the evidence suggests Ngqula plays bad cop to Erwin’s nice guy. He does the work the earnestly politically correct minister, with his red-brick trade unionist credentials, doesn’t want to be seen doing. As Ngqula ran away from the SAA strike, quaffing champagne in the game reserve, and the fleet sat on the apron, Erwin was busy pleading the need for belt-tightening. He argued the demands by SAA staff were excessive, but hundreds of millions later Ngqula could have settled – if he had paid attention – for about the same number staff demanded before the strike (and its attendant anger) began.

And there is a curious similarity between the ambience at SAA and that which existed under Ngqula at the IDC. During his reign there, he was able to terrorise an un-unionised, unrepresented, group of mild executives, intent on doing their best. Under Ngqula, the pervasive emotions at SAA are fear and loathing.

This explains why the pilots are now negotiating their annual salary increases with unusual ferocity – and why they are likely to return, later, to the issue uppermost for most of them – that they have lost confidence in SAA’s management.

It is now common cause that Ngqula’s confederates at the IDC were intimately involved in the process that enabled Khumalo to make off with largest looting yet of an empowerment (read enrichment) structure (R1,4bn), and that some of his cronies now work for Khumalo’s Metallon company.

And will someone tell us, please, how Ngqula was able to purchase a //pied a terre// next door to Khumalo’s summer home in the village bordering St Tropez in the south of France.

Just as some of the men and women at the IDC were gathering the courage to speak out about this – and laid formal charges with those fabulous Scorpions (still no word about the progress of the “investigation”) – Erwin came to the rescue. He plucked his protégé from the cauldron and dropped him into SAA and then heaps praise on him for restoring the airline to “profitability” – when much of the last year’s profits can be credited to the huge write off of that hedge book.

It seems that Teflon man has been charged with taking SAA to the auction block. His job will be, in due course, to sell the airline to any other willing buyer (another Indian billionaire?), and it will be intriguing to see who will be the beneficiaries.

These two men make for an awesome – and dangerous – twosome.

== =And another thing…=

In all the excitement, dismay, anger and smug satisfaction surrounding the raid by the Scorpions on former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s Forest Town, Johannesburg, home, the simultaneous service of a search warrant on Jurgen Kögel received only a subdued mention.

It may turn out a lot more important. Kögel, described in City Press as a Namibian expatriate, is a financial adviser to Zuma. He is also, however, a long-standing friend of and financial adviser to President Thabo Mbeki. Now what could that presage?

Ho, hum.
 * David Gleason**


 * From: http://www.gleasontorque.com/gleasonTorque.co.za/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArID=124**