SAA is just not an airline. It also services the tourism industry and creates jobs beyond the aviation sector, writes Hlengani Mathebula
It makes it possible for people and business to connect across continents and cultures.
Most importantly, government’s approach to finding a lasting solution for SAA must be informed by evidence.The effort, therefore, to rescue SAA, which is currently under way, requires a clearer policy on the role of the airline in the South African, if not African, aviation industry.Indeed, the entire African continent’s aviation sector has so much untapped potential.
The key question government should answer, rather urgently given the circumstances, is why it should rescue SAA. In a fiscal environment in which resources are as tight as Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has constantly warned us, it will be a waste of very scarce public resources for government to continually pump money into propping up SAA when what the airline does can easily be done by another airline, or airlines.
More so if the role that airline company is expected to play can be taken by companies other than those owned by government.
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