Former SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni's attempts to reverse the lifetime declaration that she is a delinquent director may be almost over, with only the Constitutional Court option left.

A Fin24 report says the SCA has dismissed Myeni's appeal application with costs, saying it had no reasonable prospect of success.

In May last year, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) declared Myeni a delinquent director for life under the Companies Act.

Myeni approached the SCA for leave to appeal after failed attempts to appeal the matter in the High Court.

Outa, which opposed Myeni's SCA appeal application, said it was not surprised about the ruling.

‘We are very happy with this. We expected it. We didn't expect the court to grant her the condonation to find that there was any case to be argued,’ said Outa CEO, Wayne Duvenage.

Myeni's lawyer Eric Mabuza said he hadn't been made aware of the order and had not studied it. He couldn't comment on what Myeni's next move would likely be.

Full Fin24 report

More light is shed on the latest situation in a Daily Maverick report.

It notes that on 15 March, Myeni submitted a second notice to the SCA seeking leave to appeal against a ruling handed down by a full Bench of the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) in February that dismissed her appeal against the enforcement order issued by Judge Ronel Tolmay on 22 December last year.

The SCA has yet to hear this second appeal about the enforcement order or issue a ruling about it. If she loses her second SCA appeal, she is likely to appeal to the Constitutional Court, suggests the DM.

Outa and the SAA Pilots’ Association (Saapa) filed the enforcement order against which she is appealing. That order requires her to forsake her remaining directorships, including the Jacob G Zuma Foundation chair.

Outa and Saapa first filed the case to declare Myeni a delinquent director for life in 2017.

Myeni, in her second SCA appeal, wrote that three judges in their ruling in February that struck her case off the roll related to the enforcement order did not deal with the appeal’s merits.

Myeni said that there should be nothing to impede her from appealing the decision. She said the three Gauteng North judges had erred, and they had committed a ‘fundamental interpretational error’, which had a ‘material bearing on their incorrect decision’.

The merits of the automatic appeal ought to have been entertained by the court, she added.

‘The issues raised are of huge general public importance and are likely to arise in many cases in the future. It is in the interests of justice that special leave to appeal is granted,’ she added.

The issues in the appeal dealing with the Companies Act regarding delinquent directors were of special public importance, Myeni wrote.

SA courts were faced every day with applications for leave to appeal, she said. So it was ‘exceptionally desirable’ that the SCA provide clarity about the ‘relatively new area of law’ created by the enforcement order against her.

‘This matter provides the rare opportunity to deal with the issues comprehensively and conclusively by (the SCA) and possibly the Constitutional Court. It will serve the public interest to do so,’ Myeni added. ‘Given my current age, this sanction is disturbingly inappropriate, even in the unlikely event of the declaration of delinquency being upheld by this court and/or the Constitutional Court,’ Myeni wrote.

Myeni remains a director of at least three companies, the Jacob G Zuma Foundation, Hope Fountain Investments 54 and Orestitrix, says the DM report.

However, on 8 February, IoL reported that 'former SAA board chairperson Dudu Myeni has resigned from all her board memberships including being the chairperson of the Jacob Zuma Foundation. This was the submission by Myeni in her urgent application asking the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria), to stop Outa and the Saapa from enforcing an order which declared her a delinquent director for life in May last year.’

Outa and Saapa approached the High Court’s sheriff to have letters of demand issued to those three entities ordering them to remove Myeni as a director after Tolmay on 22 December sanctioned their application for an enforcement order.

However, the sheriff could not find the three entities’ representatives to issue them with the letters of demand, said Outa’s executive director of its accountability unit, Stefanie Fick.

Full Daily Maverick report