Armscor asks CEO to quit - we're on a roll here

The board of Armscor has asked CEO Sipho Thomo to resign but a standoff 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 do so.

"I'm not planning to resign. I have no reason to resign," he said.

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Excessive pay hikes

In September, the Democratic Alliance protested that Thomo was receiving excessive pay increases while Armscor to battled to fulfill its mandate.

Armscor denied this, saying he had been paid an increase of 6.8% in 2007/08 and 13.26% in 2008/09, bringing his salary to R1.45m.

The company revealed however that Armscor had paid Thomo, who had at one stage been tipped to take over at Denel, a restraint of trade payment. It comes to one year's salary, of which 60% was paid earlier this year.

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One of my earliest memories of Jacob Zuma - and for a long time, the defining one - was his 1999 defence in parliament of the ANC's policy of cadre deployment. At its national conference in December 1997 the ruling party had adopted a resolution on cadre policy. And in 1998 the ANC set about implementing a programme of bringing all ‘levers of power' under its control through of placing loyalists in all key positions across the state.

On November 30 1998 the ANC's National Working Committee met to discuss its progress in implementing the resolution. Zuma, as Thabo Mbeki's then loyal No. 2, was appointed head of the national deployment committee, the body tasked with overseeing the distribution and allocation of cadres. According to a press statement issued after the meeting, "The NWC discussed and adopted a document on the ANC deployment strategy. The deployment strategy will provide broad guidelines for deployment of ANC cadres to all areas which the movement regards as crucial for the transformation project."

That document itself spelt out the ANC's totalitarian aspirations. It called for the ruling party to "strengthen the political and administrative control and supervisory structures of the ANC" in the party itself, parliament, the provincial legislatures, local government and the civil service. It further stated that "We must strengthen our leadership of all parastatals and statutory bodies" as well as "in all other sectors of social activity", including the economy, education, sport and the media. http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?p=3331850#post3331850

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