(From left) Gill Marcus, Justice Lex Mpati (Chairperson) and Emmanuel Lediga were appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2018 to probe allegations of impropriety within the Public Investment Corporation. Successive administrations have commissioned numerous reviews into the governance of State-Owned Companies. The country's challenge is therefore not a shortage of diagnostic reports. It is an implementation deficit, says the writer.
Zamikhaya Maseti
The administrative and executive turmoil that has engulfed the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) is both unfortunate and deeply concerning.
The precautionary suspension of its Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Dlamini, has once again exposed the fragility of governance within one of South Africa's most strategic public institutions. Yet to interpret the current developments merely as an isolated governance dispute would be to miss the larger political economy question confronting the democratic State.
The PIC is not simply another State-Owned Company. As the manager of approximately R3 trillion in assets, principally on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund, it occupies a unique position in South Africa's financial architecture.
