Transnet’s former CEOs came in for a severe rousting when the parastatal’s board chairman, Popo Molefe, addressed a packed media conference in Sandton today.
During the briefing, which was originally scheduled for December last year, Molefe pulled no punches as he laid into Brian Molefe and Siyabonga Gama and the disgraceful conduct that eventually led to their downfall.
He said that what the new board had found in its efforts to “clean up” up Transnet, thereby “bringing the organisation back on track”, was that “many executives were going to the office to loot and to loot as fast as they could”.
He did, however, temper his sentiments saying that many people at Transnet were innocent yet added that “good people were moved out of their positions as state capture dominated the agenda”.
Those who had previously held the reins, Molefe argued, had made it their business to turn Transnet into an organisation whose “primary facility was theft”.
And the scale of thieving, he stressed, was staggering.
Diverting his attention, if only momentarily, from last year’s “high drama” that saw Gama putting up a determined if futile fight to stay on in a position he had twice lost due to suspicions of malfeasance and mismanagement, Molefe said “operational efficiencies and generating revenue” had been identified as key objectives for Transnet’s recovery period.
But rooting out the rot that had been allowed to spread so deep would be an important part of the freight and rail parastatal’s redemption story, Molefe emphasised.
“We are looking at what money was made and, with inflation in mind, will be looking at what must be repaid.”
According to CFO Mohamed Mohamedy, initial estimations show that some R1.8bn was appropriated from Transnet’s coffers “and it’s a figure that could grow”.
Acting CEO Tau Morwe, although also touching on the extent of corruption under his predecessors, preferred to concentrate on driving growth and expansion at Transnet.
“We are not moving the kind of volumes we want to,” he said.
He emphasised that Transnet Freight Rail (TRF) had been flagged as the biggest challenge going forward.
“If we can fix TFR we will be fixing 50% of our problems.”
But ultimately it comes down to steadying a parastatal that, much like Eskom, was used as a “piggy bank”, Molefe said.
“And we don’t intend to defend the indefensible by the time we get to the Zondo Commission into state capture. We are determined to continue with our clean-up campaign.”
-Eugene Goddard
