The board of Armscor has asked CEO Sipho Thomo to resign, but a stand-off is looming as he refuses to go.
Board chairperson Popo Molefe told Parliament’s portfolio committee on defence on Wednesday that he asked Thomo last week to quit, and gave him three days to mull the matter.
Briefing the committee while Thomo was asked to leave the room, he said Armscor had come to the conclusion that ”he’s taking all of us down” and that the state arms-procurement utility’s woes would only be resolved if he left.
”We have asked him to resign … He should have come back to me on Saturday. By Monday he has not done so,” Molefe said.
”We now have to look at which options are open to us.”
Thomo told reporters that he had no plans to resign.
”I’m not planning to resign. I have no reason to resign,” he said.
This comes amid the ongoing battle between the Eskom board and CEO Jacob Maroga, which prompted board chair Bobby Godsell to quit on Monday.
Godsell said he had no choice because the board could not secure the government’s support for its acceptance of Maroga’s earlier resignation.
Molefe said the board did not need the state’s backing to dismiss Thomo.
Opposition MPs welcomed the board’s decision to ask Thomo to step down but asked why it had taken them so long.
They suggested that it was his handling of information about the cost of the country’s now cancelled deal to buy Airbus A400M heavy-lift planes that finally prompted the board to act despite long-standing tension with Thomo.
Thomo admitted to shocked MPs last month that the cost had rocketed from an already steep R17-billion in 2006 to an ”estimated” R47-billion. Cabinet scrapped the deal last week.
”That was very badly handled. We think it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back,” an MP told the South African Press Association. — Sapa