The inglorious collapse of the Public Investment Corporation (PIC)-owned Daybreak Foods illustrates yet again the glaring lack of accountability that plagues our public institutions, and the casual wastage of public funds without repercussions.
Last week this newspaper, not for the first time, exposed a slew of transgressions, financial and managerial, that have run Daybreak into the ground, reducing it from the seventh-largest poultry producer to a basket case.
Up to 3,400 workers have gone unpaid, thousands of live chickens have suffered and died in a case that shocked animal-rights inspectors.
The problems at Daybreak cannot be separated from the culture of wastefulness, cronyism and lack of accountability that taints the PIC despite the Mpati commission, which exposed dodgy investments and poor oversight over billions in public money.
The PIC emerges from the Daybreak scandal as an institution whose guardianship of the R2.4-trillion in public funds it manages verges on the criminally reckless.
This week we report the PIC has applied for, and will probably receive, yet another bailout for Daybreak, to the tune of about R500m. This will be full circle for the company, once a flagship empowerment project, which was formed after its purchase from Afgri Poultry for R1.2bn in 2015.
With the budget being presented this week is it too much to hope that the axe will hover above such grandiose and wasteful experiments as Daybreak and its greedy bosses, rather than on children’s schooling?
Parliament should step up and take stock, for its job is to safeguard public money, not to look away when grandees are being enriched at public expense. This scrutiny should go beyond structural issues and take a closer look at the individuals involved, with a view to retrieving funds and/or prosecution.
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