The South African Submit Workplace is lastly ready to draw the companions it must survive, performing CEO Fathima Gany has informed TechCentral in an interview – supplied authorities delivers the R3.8-billion it promised however has by no means paid.
Gany, who leads the “excessive care” management workforce assembled to steer the Submit Workplace out of enterprise rescue, mentioned the entity is awaiting a excessive courtroom ruling on the enterprise rescue practitioners’ software for substantial implementation. If it succeeds, the newly appointed board takes over. “Within the meantime, defending worth and liquidity whereas looking for partnerships and rolling out our Aarto partnership shall be key,” she mentioned.
The courtroom course of has, nevertheless, hit a snag. The practitioners’ software, which might ordinarily safe a listening to date inside six weeks, has drawn opposition over the excellent fee of 18c within the rand owed to statutory collectors.
Gany mentioned the intention is to settle the 18c dispute via a business association exterior courtroom, however warned {that a} contested software might drag on. “I perceive from my dialog that it could possibly be so long as six months,” she mentioned, including that a few month has already been misplaced.
Requested the query the organisation hears most – why South Africa nonetheless wants a Submit Workplace in 2026, when customers have lengthy since migrated to non-public couriers like Postnet and e-mail – Gany mentioned the reply appears totally different exterior the cities.
“Taking a look at it from an urbanised perspective, it’s an easy conclusion to say we don’t want it anymore,” she mentioned. “However South Africa’s urban-rural unfold places it within the firm of rising markets reminiscent of Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil and India, the place bodily mail and over-the-counter transactions stay important as a result of the posh of connectivity merely doesn’t exist in all places.”
Most useful asset
That attain, she argued, is the Submit Workplace’s most precious asset. “What the Submit Workplace has is an intangible that no different SOE (state-owned enterprise) has, which is attain… Ninety-eight % of the inhabitants will be touched.”
On the query of privatisation, Gany mentioned it isn’t an both/or selection. “It may be a hybrid,” she mentioned. “Sure social obligations – common service, worldwide mail, supply no matter profitability – are constitutional and “by no means go away”, she mentioned. “Quite a lot of instances folks take a look at a enterprise that’s not earning profits, however a sure a part of the enterprise isn’t designed to become profitable.”
Learn: Cupboard fingers the Submit Workplace a board, however not a bailout
Gany declined to relitigate authorities’s choice to spurn former CEO Mark Barnes, who provided R5.2-billion to purchase the Submit Workplace and just lately claimed in an interview with Enterprise Day columnist Peter Bruce that he had tabled a bid involving China’s Alibaba to purchase the corporate. It could have left the state with 40% and veto rights over social obligations – solely to be “ghosted” – in keeping with Barnes.
“I wouldn’t know; it was earlier than my time,” she mentioned. “I can’t say that the deal was a mistake. I feel we might construction offers going ahead.”
She argued that enterprise rescue itself was the impediment to touchdown a deal of that sort. “So long as you’re in enterprise rescue … the sentiment of misery continues to be there. I don’t assume we’re actually attracting the very best companions [yet].”
An e-commerce participant drawn to the Submit Workplace’s last-mile attain is a believable suitor. “I’d assume there’s nonetheless an attractiveness ought to an acceptable accomplice come alongside.”
The Aarto contract, beneath which the Submit Workplace serves – electronically and bodily – visitors infringement notices, is a distinct animal, she mentioned, notably now that Aarto has gone reside nationally. “Aarto isn’t a accomplice; it’s a authorities enterprise, so it’s a buyer.”
Mail nonetheless pays the payments – for now
Stripped of Postbank, which was hived off in opposition to Barnes’s recommendation, the Submit Workplace nonetheless earns about 67% of its income from conventional mail – proof of relevance, in Gany’s telling, but additionally a warning. “It’s not a enterprise that you would be able to say, ‘I’m going to be right here 10 years from now,’ as a result of your income yr on yr will lower as modernisation occurs.”
Diversification rests on changing into an “omnichannel” transaction platform for the state – motorcar licence renewals and comparable providers executed at publish workplace counters – alongside a first-/last-mile courier enterprise and a property portfolio she describes as an ignored fast win. The Submit Workplace can be creating a commercialisation technique to monetise, promote or repurpose properties, pending Public Finance Administration exemptions being issued by authorities.
The rescue plan adopted by collectors in December 2023 was constructed on a R6.2-billion authorities dedication, of which solely R2.4-billion ever arrived. Requested whether or not the Submit Workplace will be sustainable with out the steadiness, Gany is blunt: “That’s the stress level, as a result of it has to return.”
She mentioned the Submit Workplace has submitted an software to nationwide treasury for the subsequent medium-term expenditure funding cycle, overlaying the 18c-in-the-rand creditor funds, working capital – “you’re not going to interrupt even for no less than a yr or possibly two years” – and funding to revive dilapidated branches and mail centres. She rejects the phrase bailout: “It’s not a bailout; it’s an funding within the organisation.”
What she guidelines out is additional shrinkage. Branches are right down to 657 and headcount has halved to beneath 6 000 via the rescue. “I don’t assume you possibly can reduce a enterprise into progress,” she mentioned, and no additional retrenchments are deliberate. “You can not declare the 98% contact level to the inhabitants” with something lower than the present footprint, although branches could also be reinvented relatively than preserved as is.
Given the Submit Workplace’s file of governance failures, Gany mentioned rebuilding belief is itself a proper workstream – and provided her working philosophy: “Monetary misery is a symptom of governance misery.”
The high-care workforce, assembled for the primary time in collaboration with the division of communications & digital applied sciences, exists to forestall a administration vacuum when the rescue practitioners and their contracted-in layer of authorized, HR and administrative managers exit on the day the courtroom grants the order. It’s intentionally momentary. “A high-care management workforce isn’t designed to be right here indefinitely,” she mentioned. A brand new memorandum of incorporation, new delegations of authority and a chief working officer appointment – the publish is vacant – are on the to-do listing.
Learn: Solly Malatsi’s Submit Workplace gamble
And success, two years from now? A mature board and everlasting govt committee with no high-care workforce in sight; money owed paid within the strange course of enterprise; solvency and liquidity resolved; state funding confined to the social mandate; and a income combine now not 67% mail. “When you simply goal these areas,” she mentioned, “I feel you’re fairly good.” — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
