After more than three years that brought about relative stability to the South African Post Office, Mark Barnes has resigned as chief executive officer over a difference of strategy with the board regarding the Post Office Bank .
Having successfully taken over the payment of social grants — something many claimed the organisation was not capable of managing — Barnes’ position was transformed from being the saviour of a struggling organisation on the margins of government to being thrust into control of government’s most central and most crucial social programme. As a political outsider, his position in control of this programme, which now formally resides under the auspices of Postbank, was always going to be tenuous.
Technically, the reason for his resignation stems from a problem with Reserve Bank rules relating to the financial stability of financial institutions which require that the shareholders of financial institutions should not themselves be under financial stress. This was very much the case when Barnes took over the Post Office, but is much less so now.
Under the option favoured by Barnes, Postbank would remain under the control of the Post Office and would continue to provide financial services and e-commerce to customers, including the distribution of social grants. But this would require the Post Office group to be recapitalised to the tune of R4.1-billion in order to meet the Reserve Bank’s licensing conditions, said Nwaila.As a standalone entity, the Postbank is adequately capitalised and meets the Reserve Bank’s conditions for a licence.
The Post Office will continue to get more support to focus on four core areas of its business, said Nwaila. Those will include delivering mail, e-commerce and logistics.
Good riddance.
Post office it do well without him we need Africans to take over