Our Lives Have Ground To A Halt

They once flew high – now SAA staffers have only empty pockets and heartache left to show for it

- Charlea Sieberhagen-Grey

For 22 years she lived her dream, travelling the world for a job she loved so much it didn’t feel like work.

“It was more like a paid vacation,” Lerato* says. “I en­ joyed going to all the different destinations, experiencing different cultures, cuisines and architectural styles that made each country unique.”

She was also the only breadwinner in her family, supporting her two children and her mom with the R15 000 take­ home pay she earned as a flight atten­dant and safety officer with South African Airways.

Now the dream has descended into more of a nightmare. Lerato is one of thousands of SAA employees who face an uncertain future after being retrenched by the embattled national carrier.

So far nothing has come of the depart­ment of public enterprises’ promise of an R10­billion loan that would cover, among other things, severance packages for employees being laid off in order to create a “new SAA” with a vastly streamlined staff complement.

Lerato received her last salary at the end of March. Her savings are all gone and her siblings have been helping her with money for food, electricity and petrol – and she’s lucky by comparison, she says.

“I’m one of only a few staffers who has family support. Many of my colleagues have had to depend on food parcels from a church in Kempton Park.”

Lerato says she’d normally do duty on three international flights a month and a week of regional or local flights.

Things worked on a roster system and the more flights you got, the more you earned.