An Examination of Political Patronage and Maladministration on State-Owned Entities with Specific Reference to South African Airways: A Literature Study

Abstract

South Africa is one of the states across the globe that is rattled with corruption and maladministration in multiple state institutions. The high rates of corruption within the government were alarming with the local, provincial, and national levels of governance such that multiple measures and task teams were established to combat this discourse. However, this has in recent years seen the spike in corruption now overlapping the State-Owned Entities (SoEs) and not so much in governmental administration. Political elites have used their influence to penetrate the state's entities to either loot their resources, cause nepotism, or harvest tenders in a corrupt manner. Thus, political patronage has allowed the occupation of these entities due to relations at the party level which escalates to business relations. Thus, cadre deployment of less skilled individuals based on political affiliations has led to corruption and maladministration of most state entities such as South Africa Airways (SAA). Through relying on qualitative methods, specifically existing literature and various official documents which describes the effects of political patronage and maladministration on SoEs with specific reference to SAA, this paper reveals that political patronage has contributed to maladministration of SoEs. Thus, due to political patronage and maladministration SAA has failed to be an epitome of effectiveness in discharging its legislative duties.