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COPE notes with inquisitive curiosity, the possibility of serious governance and criminal charges being brought on the previous South African Airways (SAA) board led by Khaya Ngqula, as published in the Business Day report on Thursday 21 April, 2009.

A forensic report carried out by auditing firm KPMG from last March, confirmed the several areas of mismanagement and governance misdemeanours by the then board led by Ngqula, who left the airline with a hefty R13.65 million exit package, together with other similarly high golden handshakes taken by other executives who left with him.

COPE applauds the brevity of the new board of Cheryl Carolous for taking such a bold and principled decision. If this is anything to go by, we encourage other quasi-government institutions that have "suffered" at the hands of such unscrupulous executives, to take a leaf from this precedence.

COPE appreciates the fact that government, therefore the taxpaying citizens of this country, will recover funds "that either went missing or were not spent in accordance with its governance rules and the Public Finance Management Act", according the KPMG report.

COPE expects the other names of individuals who were involved and identified in the audit report will be made public, so the country can be aware of these people, should they be deployed or working elsewhere in government.

COPE deplores the poor policy of cadre deployment. This story confirms the consequences of the problem of cadre deployment, where no responsibility is taken by the ruling party about the nature of their deploy-ies and their subsequent slipshod conduct and impunity. This points to the ANC's necessity to review their deployment standards, member's corporate behavior, evaluate their work ethic and outcomes.

COPE looks forward with keen interest, the SAA board's findings on this matter in their report next week.