Cabinet has approved a new board for the South African Post Office, removing a key procedural hurdle to the troubled entity applying to exit business rescue – but handing the incoming directors an organisation that the national treasury still refuses to fund and that its rescue practitioners were, just months ago, contemplating liquidation.
Communications minister Solly Malatsi on Friday welcomed the cabinet-approved board, alongside the appointment of three permanent deputy directors-general in his department. He described the board as “a significant step towards Sapo (the Post Office) exiting business rescue”, saying it would help restore stability in strategic oversight and governance.
The board is chaired by Regina Sizakele Madlala, with Margaret Mosibudi Phiri as deputy chair. The other members are Vuyo Mafata, Tanya van Meelis, Mantombi Lekhuleni, Mthokozisi Daluxolo Xulu, Mduduzi Justice Kennedy Bophela, Charley Fred Chain, David Mangena and Khonanjalo Buthelezi.
The appointment matters because it unblocks the Post Office’s exit from business rescue. Acting CEO Fathima Gany has said the court application to exit the process formally would be filed only once a new board and executive team were in place. With the board now approved, that filing is the obvious next step.
What the appointment does not resolve is the funding crisis at the heart of the state-owned company’s troubles. The Post Office has been in business rescue since July 2023, when practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons were appointed.
Their rescue plan, adopted by creditors in December 2023, was built around a promised R3.8-billion government injection that has never materialised.
No funding
The 2026 budget again allocated no direct funding to the Post Office, leaving it with only universal-service payments that rise from about R572-million in 2025/2026 to R619-million by 2027/2028.
By March, the practitioners were engaging government about terminating the rescue, warning there was no reasonable prospect of implementing the plan without the money. The Companies Act obliges practitioners to file for liquidation where no such prospect exists – an outcome that would, by some accounts, make the Post Office the first national postal service in the world to cease operating.
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The entity the new board inherits is a shadow of its former self. More than 4 300 staff were retrenched and 366 branches closed in 2024, leaving roughly 650 outlets. Postbank withdrew its services from Post Office branches on 2 May 2026, removing one of the few remaining reasons for many customers to visit a post office.
On the deputy director-general appointments, Malatsi said the department will, for the first time since the department was established in its current form, have a full complement of permanent DDGs, covering media and content, digital infrastructure and technologies, and administration. Building a fully capacitated team had been one of his priorities since taking office, he said. The department did not name the three appointees.
For all the language of stability, the new board’s first task is a stark one: to take an entity with no funded future to court and argue that it can stand on its own. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
