Crucial Air Traffic and Navigation Services faces payroll and skills crisis
The state-owned Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS), responsible for controlling every aircraft in South Africa's skies, is facing a convergence of crises.
Already under regulatory scrutiny over grounded flights, leadership instability and concerns about passenger safety, ATNS is now grappling with payroll chaos that has left air traffic controllers and other critical personnel short-paid, overpaid or unable to access payslips.
A whistleblower told Daily Maverick that these issues, far from being isolated glitches, form part of a broader pattern of operational lapses, internal inequities and governance failures that threaten safety and service continuity.
'This is the second payroll issue in less than a year and the third incident this year regarding unpaid overtime claims and training allowances,' an ATNS employee told Daily Maverick, underscoring that the distraction of missing pay is not merely an HR hiccup but a potential hazard in a safety-critical environment.
Stalled on the runway
In July, many ATNS employees logged into their bank accounts to discover their salaries had been underpaid by thousands of rands. Others were overpaid, while some could not even access their payslips.
For a workforce where operational vigilance is paramount, the impact of such disruptions isn't merely a speed bump but a safety risk.
Linden Birns, aviation expert and publisher of the industry newsletter Plane Talking, underscored the risk to Daily Maverick: 'You don't want people who have got such a responsible job to be distracted by something like that.'
The psychological burden is not academic — air traffic controllers and ATNS staff manage split-second decisions involving hundreds of lives, and the erosion of their financial security risks undermining the very focus that makes aviation safe.
At the centre of the payroll dispute is the payroll software in use by ATNS. According to Solidarity's sector co-ordinator for aviation, Barend Smit, who confirmed the salary issues, the system's shortcomings have been long evident.
Smit told Daily Maverick the system was 'unreliable, outdated… Many clients have become frustrated with [its shortcomings] and moved on.'
He said that in correspondence with ATNS, the union had cited contraventions of sections 32(3) and 33 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
Solidarity has formally demanded the termination of ATNS's agreement with Oracle in favour of a more reliable system. In its written response to Daily Maverick, the ATNS disputed any systemic failure, stating: 'A temporary technical glitch occurred and corrective processes were implemented.'
Pay disparity and policy challenges
Beyond the immediate payroll dispute, internal wage and policy disparities are fuelling further resentment. In the 2025 salary adjustment round, air traffic controllers allegedly received a 9.3% increase, technicians 6.3% and administrative staff 5.3%. Air traffic controllers also benefited from retention packages in the 2024/25 financial year, while other categories did not.
Employees allege this has compounded morale problems, especially when coupled with differing remote work arrangements.
'Support staff are forced to work in the office full-day Monday to Friday, while the rest of the head office and some admin staff work remotely,' the whistleblower told Daily Maverick.
For Smit, these disparities have operational implications.
'If a controller or technician isn't paid on time, you create a chain reaction — they may not be able to cover transport costs, they arrive stressed, and that stress carries into the control room. In this job, distraction can be dangerous.'
In response to questions from Daily Maverick, ATNS clarified that employee remuneration structures and service level agreements with third parties — such as their payroll contractor — were not disclosed to external parties.
Leadership in turbulence
The payroll instability comes against a backdrop of leadership challenges and infrastructure lapses. Earlier this year, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy suspended ATNS CEO Nozipho Mdawe over the organisation's failure to maintain instrument flight procedures at key airports — procedures that dictate the circumstances under which flights can operate.
Birns recalled one striking example at Kimberley airport just last week: 'No flights could go in or out … because there are no currently valid instrument flight procedures for Kimberley, either arrival or departure.'
This followed an earlier systems failure at Johannesburg, where the primary air traffic control system was corrupted and the backup had not been maintained, creating operational gaps in one of the busiest airspaces in the country.
The looming exodus
ATNS is also contending with a looming skills crisis. Globally, trained air traffic controllers are in short supply, and South Africa has seen its share of departures.
'There's been quite an exodus of people going over to other parts of the world … there's a global shortage of controllers,' said Birns.
The opening of new international airports in other countries will intensify this competition, given the global skills shortage, and Smit warned that the impact could be direct, highlighting that a new airport will soon open in the Middle East.
'That will need at least about 150 traffic controllers,' said Smit. 'I think there's only one place that those airports are going to look for them, and that's in South Africa.'
The combined effect of payroll instability, wage disparities and morale issues risks accelerating staff departures at precisely the moment when replacements are hardest to find.
Why ATNS matters
The stakes extend beyond ATNS's internal performance. Birns emphasised that the aviation sector had 'massive catalytic power in terms of cascading job creation' and that the government's failure to grasp the interdependence of air transport and economic growth was costly.
'Infrastructure failures hold the growth of the economy to ransom,' he said.
An ATNS that is distracted, understaffed or hobbled by systemic faults risks constraining trade, tourism and investment far beyond the runway.
The Department of Transport did not respond to direct questions from Daily Maverick, but referred all queries to ATNS, which stated that it 'fosters a culture of open, honest and fair two-way communication with employees' and applies 'internal policies based on operational requirements, safety imperatives, and service continuity'.
It said hybrid work arrangements are supported 'where feasible' and that operational requirements dictated site presence for some staff categories.
It did not respond to direct questions about salary disputes.
In response to the mounting challenges at ATNS, Creecy mandated a comprehensive turnaround strategy, and on 30 January she approved recommendations from her Committee of Aviation Experts — established in December 2024 — to immediately enhance staffing, critical systems and governance within the organisation.
The plan focuses on accelerating the recruitment of air traffic controllers and technical personnel over a period of up to three years, while also upgrading communication, navigation and surveillance infrastructure, including air traffic flow management; restoring and maintaining vital instrument flight procedures; and streamlining governance by instituting single-point accountability for implementation.
In an update in March, Creecy outlined measures to stabilise and rebuild ATNS since December 2024, including fast-tracking the recruitment of air traffic controllers, upgrading critical navigation and surveillance systems, reinstating suspended flight procedures and strengthening safety oversight.
She said these interventions were 'beginning to show progress', while noting that ATNS's CEO remained on precautionary suspension pending an independent investigation. DM
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Daily Maverick
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Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
R200m cocaine theft from KZN Hawks office may tie police to global drug traffickers
Cocaine worth R200m was stolen from the Hawks offices in KwaZulu-Natal four years ago. Daily Maverick has established that the way the drug was stored seemed to break police protocol. And now there are claims the saga is linked to a murder, which fits into South Africa's unprecedented cop scandal. The police discovered a major cocaine consignment, weighing about 541kg and worth more than R200-million, at a container depot in Isipingo in the south of Durban in June four years ago. The stash had logos on it, including the Jaguar brand. It may be coincidence, but a now-jailed member of Mexico's globally notorious Sinaloa Cartel, which is known for bribing officials and appears to be active in South Africa, used the image of a jaguar on cocaine bundles to show his ownership. A few months after the Isipingo bust, and about 100km away, criminals targeted cocaine of the same weight and value in November 2021. View this post on Instagram A post shared by South African Police Service🇿🇦 (@sapoliceservice_za) Windows at the Port Shepstone offices of the Hawks, the police unit that focuses on priority crimes in the country, were forced open. A safe inside the building was tampered with — and 541kg of cocaine, presumably the consignment confiscated in Isipingo, was stolen. This all happened in KwaZulu-Natal, the province where Durban harbour is located. Global traffickers seem to prefer using that port when shipping masses of drugs into South Africa, pointing to cartels having pointsmen in place there to smuggle narco consignments around. Broken protocol suggestions Now, nearly four years after the cocaine theft from the Port Shepstone Hawks offices that saw an internal inquiry ordered, the police have still not told the public what really happened. It therefore is not clear if anyone has been held to account for the critical breach at a key building that was clearly not properly secured. Several sources in policing circles have before said the burglary was probably an inside job — that police officers colluded with drug traffickers. A source recently expressed frustration that the case exposed 'negligence' on the part of the police, yet key questions about it remain unanswered. Daily Maverick has also established that police officers appear to have broken their own protocol in the way the R200-million cocaine was stored over several months. It should have been sent to a police laboratory, but was not. Last week Daily Maverick asked the Hawks several questions about the saga, including if it was the norm to keep masses of drugs at its offices, whether any members had been polygraph tested or had suddenly resigned after the theft, and what had happened to the case. In response, Hawks spokesperson Thandi Mbambo simply said: 'We confirm that this matter is still under investigation and details thereof cannot be publicised.' The R200-million Port Shepstone cocaine theft now fits into a broader and unprecedented policing scandal in South Africa that is forcing it back into public focus. Last month, on 6 July 2025, KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi held a press conference and made a series of astounding allegations that are effectively reshaping aspects of the South African Police Service (SAPS). He said a high-level criminal syndicate was operating in the country and it extended into the police, the Police Ministry, Parliament, prison officials, the judiciary and other law-enforcement authorities. Mkhwanazi also alleged that a 'drug cartel' headquartered in Gauteng and bringing in narcotics from South America was ultimately controlling the syndicate. On top of that, he accused the police minister at the time, Senzo Mchunu, and the National Deputy Commissioner of Crime Detection, Shadrack Sibiya, of shutting down a political killing task team, a move that hindered investigations. The accusations, which they denied, resulted in them being placed on leave. Mchunu also denied accusations that he had colluded with a crime suspect. Firoz Cachalia is now filling the Police Minister position in an acting capacity. Sibiya has launched legal action challenging Mkhwanazi's accusations and what he says is unfair treatment. DJ Sumbody's murder — claims and denial Mkhwanazi made several other accusations during last month's press conference. He referenced confiscated firearms allegedly linked to several cases in Gauteng involving high-profile artists. Despite suspects being identified in those cases, Mkhwanazi said prosecutors had yet to act so that arrests could be made. It appeared that one of the cases involved Oupa John Sefoka, better known as DJ Sumbody, who was murdered in a Gauteng shooting in November 2022. Two others were also killed in the incident. Sefoka had business ties to, among others, suspected 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield who faces unrelated criminal accusations in Cape Town (and who previously faced firearm-related charges, since withdrawn, alongside ex-police officers from Gauteng). About two weeks after Mkhwanazi's press conference, four suspects were arrested in connection with Sefoka's murder. Among the four were former police detective Michael Pule Tau and businessman Katiso Molefe — Mkhwanazi had referenced both, who face other criminal charges, during his July press conference when he also alleged a drug cartel was based in Gauteng. Previously there were unofficial murmurs, that could not be corroborated, that Sefoka's killing may be connected to drugs and gangsterism. And shortly after last month's arrests connected to the murder, Sunday World published an article saying that 'police insiders and associates close to' Sefoka claimed his killing was linked to a drug consignment that 'disappeared' from KwaZulu-Natal police custody a few years ago. This is an apparent reference to the Port Shepstone R200-million cocaine theft of 2021. The Sunday World article said sources also claimed that 'the consignment resurfaced in Johannesburg's club circuit, where it was sold at a cut-rate price' and that this upset the 'original owners' of the drugs. MEDIA RELEASE FROM 'BE A SUMBODY' FOUNDATION: — IRS Forensic Investigations (@FraudWatchZA) July 30, 2025 According to the claims, Sefoka got entangled in this saga that also involved a Cape Town 'businessman'. (Daily Maverick, meanwhile, has heard a countering theory – that the original drug owners orchestrated the burglary to retrieve their drugs when they realised the consignment was in the poorly secured Hawks offices.) Sefoka's family, in a joint statement with a foundation linked to him, rubbished the Sunday World article's contents. It said the claims were 'entirely unfounded and appear to be part of a calculated smear campaign aimed at exploiting his name for sensationalism'. The issue of drugs, however, surfaced in the Alexandra Magistrate's Court last week when Sefoka murder plot accused Katiso Molefe applied for bail. The Alexandra Magistrate's Court has for the first time heard how the murder of popular music producers DJ Sumbody and DJ Vintos were allegedly a drug-related hit. The accused, Katiso 'KT' Molefe, appeared in court on Wednesday for a bail application. He was arrested over two… — Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) August 6, 2025 According to various reports on the court proceedings, the State had alleged that Molefe had ties to the illicit drug trade. Molefe's bail application is expected to resume on Friday, 15 August. Back to the R200-million Port Shepstone theft of 2021. Jaguar clue and (in)secure storage According to various sources, that stolen cocaine consignment was the one found in Isipingo on 22 June 2021. Traffickers may have got wind of pending police action and temporarily abandoned this stash destined for Gauteng. A previous SAPS statement about the Isipingo interception said: 'Twenty-six canvas bags with TikTok and Jaguar brands were found with bricks of cocaine.' And Hawks head at the time, Godfrey Lebeya, had warned: 'We are closing in on the drug cartels.' While it remains unclear who owned the seized cocaine, Daily Maverick established that high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel member Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, who was reportedly sentenced to 40 years in jail in the US in 2022, used aliases including 'Jaguar'. A US indictment against him and other Sinaloa Cartel members said he had 'exclusively used the logo of a 'jaguar' on cocaine bundles to designate his ownership'. In any event, when the R200-million cocaine consignment was stolen in 2021 a few months after the Isipingo bust, the Hawks issued limited details. A statement had said the burglary occurred at their Port Shepstone offices over the weekend of 5 and 8 November 2021. 'The suspects gained entry into the building by forcing open the windows. One of the safes in the office, which were used to store exhibits, was tampered with,' the statement said. 'The suspects stole 541kg of cocaine drugs… and ransacked the office where safes were kept.' All this suggests that for nearly five months an international cartel's cocaine worth more than R200-million had been kept in Hawks offices that were not adequately secured, to the point that the windows could be forced open. This brings up other highly concerning questions about what else is being stored in police premises and whether those buildings have proper security measures in place. Forensic labs According to government information, confiscated drugs aside from cannabis should be sent to an SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for testing and storage. A police minister response to a 2016 Parliamentary question about seized drugs said that except for cannabis, consignments were sent to forensic science laboratories 'for analysis, secure storage and destruction, whilst awaiting finalisation of the case and issuing of a relevant disposal order by the National Prosecuting Authority'. Another response to a Parliamentary question, dated February this year, stated: 'Drugs, including illegal substances (excluding cannabis), are stored separately and all illegal drugs, regardless of whether a case docket has been registered, must be forwarded to the… FSL for analysis and eventual destruction.' The SAPS, according to yet another response to a June 2025 Parliamentary question, has four laboratories in the country — in Gauteng, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. It therefore appears that the R200-million worth of cocaine stolen from the Hawks offices in Port Shepstone in 2021 should have been stored at the KwaZulu-Natal Forensic Science Laboratory, which is in Amanzimtoti. (This FSL experienced flooding damage in 2022.) Why the police did not secure the cocaine there now remains one of many publicly unanswered questions around the theft. The Crime Intelligence cases Adding to that scandal is an incident sandwiched between the R200m Isipingo cocaine confiscation of June 2021 and the theft of the cocaine in Port Shepstone a few months later. In July 2021 a consignment of cocaine, also worth about R200-million, was intercepted in Johannesburg. Four suspects were arrested. According to their lawyer, they were Warrant Officer Marumo Mogana, a Crime Intelligence officer; Warrant Officer Steve Pakula, an Organised Crime Unit member; Samuel Mashaba who was acting deputy director of Gauteng's community safety department; and businessman Tumelo Nku. The case against them went on to be withdrawn. Earlier this year, though, the National Prosecuting Authority told Daily Maverick it had instructed further investigations be carried out. A decision on the case would be made after that. This saga exposed divisions within the country's historically controversial Crime Intelligence unit. Daily Maverick previously reported that Major-General Feroz Khan, the head of counterintelligence and security at Crime Intelligence, was accused of defeating the ends of justice and bringing the SAPS into disrepute over his presence at this cocaine interception. But Khan, via court processes, countered that the Crime Intelligence head at the time, Dumisani Khumalo, had used the cocaine interception to try to get rid of him because of his investigations into the abuse of secret funds, with possible links to Khumalo. According to the police, the cocaine at the centre of that controversy had come from Brazil, arrived in KwaZulu-Natal and was transported to Gauteng. This matches some of Mkhwanazi's recent accusations about an alleged drug cartel and the routes it used. As for Khumalo, Daily Maverick reported that earlier this year the SAPS had warned Parliament he was being targeted via misinformation because he was cleaning up the Crime Intelligence unit. Khumalo and six colleagues went on to be arrested in June on corruption-related charges, which they denied. Mkhwanazi, during his pivotal press conference the following month, implied that they had been arrested with the deliberate aim of destroying Crime Intelligence. Cartels and Commission of Inquiry President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced a Commission of Inquiry into Mkhwanazi's allegations. Its terms of reference stated that it would investigate 'whether criminal syndicates, including but not limited to drug cartels, have infiltrated or exert undue influence over' various law enforcing bodies. This included the SAPS, metro law enforcement in Gauteng, the National Prosecuting Authority and judiciary. Daily Maverick has reported extensively on the different cartels that operate via South Africa. Brazil's notorious Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), or First Capital Command, is among them. And there are, of course, suspicions relating to the Sinaloa Cartel, once headed by Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the US in 2019. A previous US court document relating to his pretrial detention had explained: 'A cornerstone of his strategy was the corruption of officials at every level of local, municipal, state, national and foreign government, who were paid cash bribes.' Suspected corruption in different government and state structures plus alleged cartel activity is at the core of what the Commission of Inquiry into Mkhwanazi's accusations is set to focus on. The 2021 Port Shepstone R200-million cocaine theft out of Hawks offices may therefore be among the incidents that the commission covers — or, in terms of exposing finer details, uncovers. DM
Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
After the Bell: Manipulating the rand — really?
There are times in life when you are so desperate to find someone else to blame for your situation that you just lash out. And you grab any chance to blame someone else. I sometimes wonder if that feeling, that horrible desperation, the feeling that our currency is so weak, is behind the very strange story about claims that a group of 28 banks, both South African and foreign, manipulated the rand. The backstory is long and complicated, but essentially, the Competition Commission says it has evidence that traders working for the banks were part of a single conspiracy. There is talk of 'rand-pairs' and secret chats on Bloomberg terminals – even phone conversations and secret agreements. Considering that the phrase 'rand-pair' is second only to watching golf in making my eyes feel somewhat weighted, it's easy to understand how this thing has such political power. It's because, like the chap on par-who-gives-a-monkey's, almost all of us have no cooking clue what is going on. And the moment I hear phrases like 'manipulation' or 'hedge' or 'rand-currency-pair', I immediately get the feeling you get when someone is trying to sell you car insurance. You just know you're being screwed. But in fact, as former Daily Maverick journalist Ray Mahlaka once clearly explained, the currency market is just too big for it to have any impact on you. Around $50-billion (about R882-billion) is traded every day. And while some of the banks involved are big, none are big enough to have played that particular game. Now obviously, some people did play games with the currency. Absa was the first to announce that it had discovered two of its traders were doing this. It told the regulators and suspended them. Standard Chartered and CitiBank have also admitted that some of their people were guilty. They've paid a fine and moved on with their lives. But some of the other banks are fighting on. As Business Live reported this morning, the Constitutional Court is finally expected to put all of this to bed one way or another in a four-day hearing next week. One hopes the coffee machine at Constitution Hill can do double-time. Four days of a hearing about currency pairs is more than we mere mortals could possibly stand. Two things have really struck me about this case. The first is that I remember speaking to the Competition Commission about it in 2017. The recording is sadly lost now, but I remember so clearly how adamant they were that first, all the named banks were involved, and second, how they would wrap up this case in a couple of months. It's 2025 now, and it's still going. The other is the language used by the banks in their defence. Take Sim Tshabalala, the CEO of Standard Bank. I think it was the first time I'd seen a CEO of one of our big banks writing an op-ed in our media, back in 2023. It was on this topic. Remember how dangerous it is for a CEO, who was not on the Bloomberg terminal or the Reuters chat or the phone conversation, to say anything dogmatic about what happened. But this is what he said in News 24 two years ago: 'We're not playing for time or looking for a deal. When we say that we are innocent of currency manipulation, we mean it. We will not settle. Where we found that our people have engaged in wrongful conduct, we will act swiftly and will work with the relevant authorities. Where we find no evidence of wrongdoing, we will protect and defend our people – our most valuable assets.' This is a person putting their entire reputation on the line. He must believe it. Firmly, utterly, unshakeably. I have a horrible feeling in my belly that the Competition Commission might feel a little silly after all of this – that the Constitutional Court, after selecting a good nine-iron, might include a few choice words about the commission's conduct in its final ruling. But that won't be the end of it. I think the damage is done. Parties such as the EFF and MK, and perhaps even the SACP, who have every incentive to attack the system, banks and institutions, will just go on attacking them. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear that phrase 'monopoly capital' again. They might even turn, again, on our judges. It's quite strange in one way. Julius Malema has mouthed off time and time again about 'currency manipulation'. It almost makes you wonder what he might know about making a profit off the manipulation of a bank. In the meantime, bankers who are innocent will probably feel pretty frustrated, too. And not just with their putting. I think they'll feel they've been dragged into something that they have nothing to do with. I'll tell you this for free, though. Like any golf tournament I've ever watched, I can't wait for the whole saga to end. DM
