South Africa Airways (SAA) announced in a statement that Nico Besuidenhout, CEO of low cost airline Mango, will stand in for suspended Monwabisi Kalawe.
“The SAA board has resolved, in consultation with the shareholder, to appoint Mr. Nico Bezuidenhout as acting SAA chief executive officer, during the absence from the company of Mr. Monwabisi Kalawe,” chairperson Dudu Myeni said in a statement.
Bezuidenhout has acted in the role before, prior to Kalawe’s appointment in April last year.
All of this is happening while an apparent power struggle is taking place with rumours persisting that that Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown wants the Kalawe suspension withdrawn. It’s also rumoured that the ladies Myeni and Brown are not the best of buddies, but Myneni is a friend of the president Jacob Zuma, so we can guess where this is going.
Last year trade union Solidarity asked South Africans to boycott flying with SAA following the airline’s decision to ban any white male students from its cadet pilot programme. Solidarity said its campaign against SAA started when the airline decided not to accept white male candidates to be trained as pilots.
Solidarity said SAA’s exclusion of white male candidates constitutes subsidised racism. The taxpayer is forced to pay for the government’s obsession to apply national racial demographics.
It’s interesting then that a white man is good enough to stand in and run the show while the ANC infighting and power struggle is playing out.
