Trevor Manuel delivers blunt diagnosis to NDR: SAA "was stolen," Eskom destroyed by greed

Trevor Manuel ran South Africa's finances for thirteen years under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, delivering genuine budget surpluses rather than the interest-adjusted kind. That record gives weight to what he told a mostly ANC audience at last week's NDR and Economic Strategy seminar: South African Airways "wasn't privatised, it was stolen," and Eskom, once the world's best-run utility able to borrow more cheaply than government itself, was brought down by plain "greed and negligence," not policy failure. Manuel widened the critique to policing, health, education and the ANC's own Polokwane-era drift, closing with a call to rebuild broken public trust..BizNews Reporter.Trevor Manuel carries a credibility on South Africa's public finances that few others in the country can claim. As finance minister for thirteen years under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, he ran budget surpluses, not the "surplus" that only appears once interest payments are stripped out, but genuine, total surpluses. That record is why, when Manuel stands up in front of a room full of ANC loyalists and says the state has failed, people listen.He did exactly that at last week's NDR and Economic Strategy seminar, in a speech flagged to BizNews by tribe member Zane Stenning and available on YouTube. Manuel used the platform to reject the idea that South African Airways was ever properly privatised at all. "It wasn't privatised, it was stolen," he told the audience, "and destroyed in the process."But his sharpest example was Eskom. Manuel reminded a mostly ANC audience that Eskom was once considered the best-run electricity utility in the world, able to borrow more cheaply than the South African government itself. It held enough spare generating capacity that the only cost taxpayers ever had to fund was electrifying poor households; everything else, Eskom paid for on its own. Today, without government guarantees, Eskom would be unable to raise money at all, certainly not at the rates it now pays.Manuel's diagnosis for how Eskom fell from there to load shedding and today's pricing crisis had nothing to do with economics or policy failure, in his view. "It was caused by greed," he said. "and negligence."He extended the same diagnosis more broadly across the state. Invoking Engels' idea of the "withering of the state," Manuel argued South Africa is watching a hollowed-out government in real time: small, unaccountable outfits registered with the CIPC that can apparently decide when to call public holidays, while "the state itself is missing in action." On policing, he pointed to the Madlanga Commission and asked whether the country had truly grasped how corrupt and dysfunctional the SAPS has become. On health, he argued NHI is a distraction from the deeper problem of administrative decay, illustrated by a local hospital that was renamed with no improvement in care to follow. On education, he said the system still trains "the black child" for a limited future, because "we place the interests of teachers as employees above the needs of students and the economy going forward."On the public finances, Manuel walked the room through three decades of numbers. South Africa's debt-to-GDP ratio stood at roughly 24% in 2009. Debt-service costs alone have since climbed to around a quarter of GDP, an inversion he traced back to a conversation with Nelson Mandela in the 1990s, who told him: "we're spending more on yesterday than on tomorrow.".He also turned on organised labour directly, a pointed moment given former COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi was seated beside him. The people allowing hospitals and police stations to fall into disrepair, Manuel said, "are actually members of trade unions," and he asked where the "developmental impact" of unions has gone.Manuel dated the unravelling to the ANC's 2007 Polokwane conference, arguing the accelerated growth framework adopted the year before, ASGISA, was "shredded" in its aftermath, and that policymaking since has avoided hard trade-offs, through to the COVID-era recovery plan negotiated at Nedlac.On representation, he argued South Africa's falling and now low electoral turnout reflects a deeper breakdown: MPs nominally in their constituencies this week and next are not meaningfully accountable to anyone, and voters "don't have a means of communicating with those who purport to represent them."The floor discussion sharpened matters further. Vavi disputed being cast as having backed the 1996 GEAR macroeconomic policy on COSATU's behalf, saying that statement came from the SACP's Charles Nqakula, while COSATU's own position at the time, drafted by Enoch Godongwane, rejected GEAR outright. Despite years of disagreement, both men agreed the tripartite alliance has since avoided the kind of substantive economic debate that once defined it.Asked what single step might break the current paralysis, Manuel pointed not to policy but to trust. "The one thing I would focus on is the re-establishment of trust with the people of South Africa," he said. "Trust has broken down completely." He added that this cannot be rebuilt through televised addresses to the nation, a pointed reference to President Cyril Ramaphosa's family meetings. "It's we are Africans, we relate to each other differently, and that is what we must focus on."Coming from the man who managed South Africa's finances through its most stable fiscal years, delivered to a room full of the ANC's own, Manuel's account of SAA and Eskom reads less like a familiar critique from outside the movement and more like an admission from inside it..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Trevor Manuel delivers blunt diagnosis to NDR: SAA "was stolen," Eskom destroyed by greed

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