I was a guest on the Gareth Cliff Show last week along with Casper de Vries and DJ Fresh. The subject under discussion was the marked reluctance some parastatal CEO’s demonstrate when it’s time for them to go; Eskom and Armscor being the two latest examples in a long line of parastatal disaster stories. Gareth rather appropriately called them “barnacles” and the studio audience voted that the only way to get them off was with a hammer and chisel.

Of course, the real problem is that many of these people should never have become CEO’s in the first place. In fact, the majority should never have risen from the position of filing clerk. So how come we have had so many utterly useless people mismanaging our essential state assets and utility? DJ Fresh hit the nail on the head when he mentioned entitlement. It appears, that fifteen years into our non racial (pause for laughter) democracy there are still people who need to be thanked. We appear to have seen that in the past week with the appointment of a man who is regarded as a safe pair of hands as the public prosecutor.

It does seem to me that there are still those who believe that all you need to become the CEO of something is a well cut suit, the latest cell phone and a BMW 760i. If you delve into the dressing up box and put on the right clothes the gods bestow on you the necessary skills to run a company. This is rather similar to my view on golf. I’ve played a couple of games and I’ve made some shots which almost tempted me to rush off and buy a set of golf clubs. Then again I’ve made some dreadful shots and lost more golf balls in lakes than I care to count. It’s at times like these that it is important to be dressed in absurdly checkered trousers with a glove hanging out the back pocket and an expensive golf shirt. That way people will think you are a real golfer who is just having a bad day. The same applies in business.

Political patronage has been the cause of many of our problems in this country and is why we are hardly likely to rise like the phoenix from the ashes of the latest recession. It’s not just in the parastatals that we’ve seen this, it’s also in government. The late Ivy Matsepe-Casaburi clearly hadn’t a clue what the internet was all about and why South Africa should have it. So she effectively kept us in the dark ages while the rest of the western world were in the modern equivalent of the industrial revolution. She never got sacked and nobody in government ever held her to account for her complete failure to bring South African communications into the 21st century.

The various clowns who have run South African Airways have always managed to look after themselves very nicely thank you while pulling the wool over their shareholder’s eyes. We even had to import a man called Coleman Andrews to rip us off. This was at the suggestion of a prominent black businessman who sits on the boards of some large companies. Doesn’t say much about his astute business judgement does it?

The South African Broadcasting Corporation was running passably well back in 1994 but it didn’t take long for it to become a disaster under new management. The issues are complex but it’s probably fair to say that many of the new intake regarded the ABC as their personal piggy bank. Thankfully it looks as though Irene Charnley and the interim board mean business and will be taking legal action against those who had their fingers in the cookie jar.

As if the corruption and abysmal lack of management skills were not enough, the amount of money it takes to send a useless exec packing is mind boggling. Ann Crotty, writing in the Business Report recently, made the comment that the one thing the new appointees are good at is understanding employment law. Before they even take the job they know they will probably cock up they have their exit strategy planned. So you could say that being appointed the CEO of a parastatal and being booted a few years later has become a business in itself.

Not that there’s much to worry about if you haven’t got your severance package sorted out to your complete satisfaction. In this country you generally get suspended on full pay, even if you’ve been accused of criminal activity. That’s something unique to the public sector it seems.

None of this is good for South Africa for obvious reasons. Weak leadership trickles down the organization so if the board members don’t appear to know what they are doing or who is CEO this week you can’t expect staff to be motivated. The absurd accusation that any black man who is chucked out of his job for incompetence is the victim of racism is something else that makes us a laughing stock. If your skin colour ensures you job security irrespective of your ability then how are we any different from apartheid South Africa?

But it’s the farewell payments that rancour with most South Africans. How is it possible to pay someone who has destroyed a national asset, or left a considerably weakened balance sheet behind, an amount that most South Africans would never earn in several lifetimes? That wouldn’t fly in most European countries so how can it be right in a country with such a gap between rich and poor? The only answer to that is that those running South Africa have a short term view of the place and regard it as ripe for plundering while the going is good.