The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) currently has two group CEOs, after negotiations between Prasa and reinstated CEO Zolani Matthews broke down.
The Sunday Times understands that Prasa offered to pay Matthews three months’ salary to settle the remaining 19 months of his contract.
Matthews has rejected the offer and wants his job back. The new CEO is Hishaam Emeran.
Matthews was reinstated by the Labour Court in July after it ruled his contract was still valid, despite it having been terminated by Prasa in December 2021.
Prasa has paid Matthews more than R16m for the 31 months he has spent at home.
Matthews wants Prasa to settle the millions of rands he spent on legal fees.
In recent years, Prasa has spent millions on botched attempts to sack executives, while paying them millions to be on suspension.
Prasa said it had relied on legal advice to appoint another CEO while Matthews’s appeal was pending. In November 2022 Matthews’s lawyers told Prasa that it could not appoint a CEO before the matter had been resolved in court. Prasa then insisted that it had no employment relationship with Matthews and it had the right to appoint a new CEO.
Matthews was fired on the basis that his dual South African/UK citizenship prevented him from obtaining security clearance. That decision was overturned by retired judge Robert Nugent at arbitration: dual citizenship was not a problem and Matthews should be reinstated.
Then Prasa’s chairman fired him again, this time for “non-performance”, a decision Prasa’s board said it had taken on 29 November 2021, but not told him about because it had chosen to sack him for security-clearance reasons.
Ramatlakane dismissed Matthews before he was removed as Prasa board chair in May 2022.
[Photo: Prasa]