Zuma’s SAA PR offensive

AT THE height of the UK’s post-financial crisis austerity measures in 2010 then prime minister David Cameron caused something of a stir in the US when he arrived there, flying business class, on a scheduled British Airways (BA) flight to attend high-level meetings.

The stir was in part because the meetings had to be scheduled around the BA schedule, which didn’t necessarily suit other heads of government. But it was mainly because the media in the US, with that country’s hugely expensive Air Force One and Air Force Two fleet, was impressed at Cameron’s belt-tightening gesture.

Not that this is unusual in the UK, where the royals and the prime minister do fly commercial sometimes and use dedicated air force planes or charters other times. Controversially, the Cameron government did invest in 2016 in a new aircraft for the use of the prime minister and senior government officials. But Cameron also managed to go viral on social media during the summer holidays when he was sighted flying on budget airline EasyJet, playing on his iPad and eating Pringles.

This is simply to make the point that it is by no means unknown for heads of government and heads of state to fly commercial, usually on the national carrier. That is standard practice in countries such as New Zealand, and in several other countries royals and other leaders use scheduled commercial flights at least some of the time.

 We, therefore, have no need to heap praise on President Jacob Zuma for his brave effort in taking flight SA 203 to New York at the weekend, presumably in the luxury at the front of the plane rather than in the cramped seats at the back. We trust that now that our president has discovered what a pleasant experience it can be, he will do it a lot more often and save the taxpayer some money.

His motives, however, are more interesting and less than pure. He clearly felt the need to show some support for his friend, the controversial South African Airways (SAA) chairwoman, Dudu Myeni, under whose watch the airline has lost waves of skilled and experienced executives and board members, and has made losses totalling R6.5bn over a two-year period, forcing it to beg for yet more government bailouts.

Myeni has now been appointed chairwoman for another year, at the helm of a new board on to which the Treasury, which is now the shareholder ministry, reportedly managed to get no more than three of its nominees. No doubt, she will attempt to drive away anyone too good or too probing, as she has done successfully before. It is possible, and certainly desirable, that this board should succeed in exercising oversight over SAA, and in installing some executives who can turn the airline around and stop the financial bleeding. But as long as the president’s friend is kept in place, this seems unlikely. That makes president’s New York flight on SAA somewhat discomforting.

However, it is not all discomfort, because the fact that the president and his advisers felt it necessary to launch such a such blatant public relations (PR) offensive surely suggests that he is feeling the heat when it comes to the excess that has been one of the marks of his presidency, along with the allegations of corruption and kickbacks.

His security advisers originally wanted to spend R4bn on a fancy new presidential plane, even though the old one is still serviceable. Now that’s been cut to a modest R100m, or maybe even R20m. And even that remains controversial. If he has taken to flying commercial, even just this once, it seems to suggest there is some pressure for austerity being brought to bear on the Presidency — and that it is being acknowledged. That can only be a very good thing, especially given that our phantom president is out of SA much of the time these days.