Cupboard has accepted a brand new board for the South African Submit Workplace, eradicating a key procedural hurdle to the troubled entity making use of to exit enterprise rescue – however handing the incoming administrators an organisation that the nationwide treasury nonetheless refuses to fund and that its rescue practitioners have been, simply months in the past, considering liquidation.
Communications minister Solly Malatsi on Friday welcomed the cabinet-approved board, alongside the appointment of three everlasting deputy directors-general in his division. He described the board as “a big step in direction of Sapo (the Submit Workplace) exiting enterprise rescue”, saying it might assist restore stability in strategic oversight and governance.
The board is chaired by Regina Sizakele Madlala, with Margaret Mosibudi Phiri as deputy chair. The opposite members are Vuyo Mafata, Tanya van Meelis, Mantombi Lekhuleni, Mthokozisi Daluxolo Xulu, Mduduzi Justice Kennedy Bophela, Charley Fred Chain, David Mangena and Khonanjalo Buthelezi.
The appointment issues as a result of it unblocks the Submit Workplace’s exit from enterprise rescue. Appearing CEO Fathima Gany has mentioned the court docket software to exit the method formally could be filed solely as soon as a brand new board and government group have been in place. With the board now accepted, that submitting is the apparent subsequent step.
What the appointment doesn’t resolve is the funding disaster on the coronary heart of the state-owned firm’s troubles. The Submit Workplace has been in enterprise rescue since July 2023, when practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons have been appointed.
Their rescue plan, adopted by collectors in December 2023, was constructed round a promised R3.8-billion authorities injection that has by no means materialised.
No funding
The 2026 finances once more allotted no direct funding to the Submit Workplace, leaving it with solely universal-service funds that rise from about R572-million in 2025/2026 to R619-million by 2027/2028.
By March, the practitioners have been partaking authorities about terminating the rescue, warning there was no cheap prospect of implementing the plan with out the cash. The Corporations Act obliges practitioners to file for liquidation the place no such prospect exists – an consequence that might, by some accounts, make the Submit Workplace the primary nationwide postal service on the earth to stop working.
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The entity the brand new board inherits is a shadow of its former self. Greater than 4 300 employees have been retrenched and 366 branches closed in 2024, leaving roughly 650 shops. Postbank withdrew its providers from Submit Workplace branches on 2 Might 2026, eradicating one of many few remaining causes for a lot of prospects to go to a submit workplace.
On the deputy director-general appointments, Malatsi mentioned the division will, for the primary time because the division was established in its present type, have a full complement of everlasting DDGs, masking media and content material, digital infrastructure and applied sciences, and administration. Constructing a completely capacitated group had been one in every of his priorities since taking workplace, he mentioned. The division didn’t title the three appointees.
For all of the language of stability, the brand new board’s first job is a stark one: to take an entity with no funded future to court docket and argue that it could actually stand by itself. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
