According to a SAA spokesperson the newspaper request for R16bn through market funding was to test the appetite of the market. Maybe so, but it was really a cry for help to all and sundry.
SAA's plea for funding has sunk to the level of a down-and-out street beggar pleading with pedestrians for alms. No matter what SAA says to the contrary the airline is on failing life support - it is time to pull the plug. No amount of loans, government guaranteed or otherwise, will result in a financial turn around. The root causes for the airline's earthbound crash remain - gross mismanagement, corruption, to name a few. Private lenders know it, and will not heed SAA's apocryphal representations of financial resilience.
SAA is a text book case of government encroachment in an industry that should entirely be run by the private sector. Government knows it, refuses to acknowledge it, but will be compelled to privatise SAA. It should do it now, rather than face the humiliation of having to do so through force of circumstances.
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