Portions of South African Airways (SAA), one of the country’s poor performing state-owned enterprises, will be sold to private companies, the ANC resolved at its national executive committee (NEC) meeting last week.

Sowetan understands that the meeting first considered selling SAA in its entirety but it was agreed that the likelihood of anyone buying it was minimal because of its poor financial state.

“The person you are going to sell SAA to, you will have to give them money, not them giving you money, which is a loss,” said ANC economic head Enoch Godongwana.

“It has been mismanaged; I doubt if it owns its fleet, it’s probably a leased fleet. So there’s no asset, I doubt if it even has that, I mean I can’t vouch for it,” he said.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule said that the NEC emphasised the need for investment in the country's infrastructure including SOEs.

"In this regard, public-private partnerships, especially in aviation and energy and other other areas, will be critical," said Magashule.

"It was agreed that that the long-standing ANC policy with respect to strategic equity partners in various state owned companies, and consideration will be given to models of worker and social ownership."

The National Treasury last month approved a R5.5bn bailout for SAA for the 2019/20 financial year.

In order to break even, SAA requires capital of almost R22bn and has so far received just over R10bn in this and last year’s financial periods.

The uncertainty of the required capital being provided by the government led to the resignation of its CEO Vuyani Jarana earlier this year.