Is Gordhan going to sell off the SoEs?

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan allegedly plans to remove top government executives and officials to weaken state-owned enterprises so they can be sold ‘for a song to his cronies’, according to The Sunday Independent.

Gordhan’s latest outburst against the CEO of arms manufacturing company Denel Dynamics, Sello Ntsihlele, was taped. Gordhan was allegedly saying that Ntsihlele ‘must leave the company and allow us to run the business and cannot continue to draw a salary and continue to behave like this’.

Ntsihlele believes Gordhan is targeting him to weaken the manufacturer so it can be sold off piece by piece. Ntsihlele has submitted four grievance claims in a month, and one is against Gordhan.

Ntsihlele claims Gordhan’s attack on him was an ‘abuse of power’ which could not go unchallenged. It appears Gordhan was angered by allegations that Ntsihlele had told Denel’s trade union stakeholders in a meeting that the company’s board was ‘useless’.

‘Forget about reckless trading – this is reckless management’, said Gordhan in the recording.

In another grievance Ntsihlele complained that the CEO of Denel Aerostructures, Mike Kgobe, and the executive manager of engineering and continued airworthiness, Shalan Chetty, allegedly shared and discussed ‘sensitive client and proprietary information belonging to Denel and specifically Denel Dynamics’ with a competitor or competitors in the UAE ‘without being mandated to or getting approval’.

He asked for an investigation into the circumstances that led to these discussions, and asked for disciplinary enquiries to be held against Kgobe and Chetty.

Public enterprises spokesperson Richard Mantu told the publication that Gordhan refuted Ntsihlele’s allegations with the contempt they deserved. 

One senior executive, who asked not to be named, said Gordhan only targeted black executives ‘to build a narrative that blacks are incompetent’.