South African Airways (SAA) chairperson Dudu Myeni could stay on at the airline until 2018, and her stay has divided MPs in Parliament, Business Day reported on Friday. This has emerged just a day after President Jacob Zuma defended the beleaguered Myeni in the National Assembly.
Myeni was first appointed to the board in 2009 and became chairperson in 2012. Despite her controversial tenure, she was reappointed as board chair in September 2016 for a nonrenewable, one-year term, which is supposed to end this week.
Treasury has reportedly confirmed that it asked her to stay on until SAA's annual general meeting, scheduled for November. Business Day reported that the SAA board asked Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba to move the meeting to January next year because SAA's annual financial statements weren't ready.
SAA will reportedly likely miss its deadline to submit its statements for 2016/17 to Parliament at the end of September. SAA is reportedly waiting for a R10 billion capital injection from Treasury before it starts preparing its statements.
The standing committee on finance in Parliament is reportedly split over Myeni.
While the committee's chairperson, Yunus Carrim, would not comment specifically on Myeni, he told Business Day: "The committee has several times raised the need for the SAA board to be strengthened through the appointment of people with more expertise in the aviation industry..."
In Parliament on Thursday, Zuma said Myeni could not be held responsible for all of SAA's problems, according to Eyewitness News.
"SAA has never been on top of the world. It has always had problems long before the people working there now came in... One person can't be blamed for all the problems at SAA..." he said.