On Monday, the Western Cape High Court ordered Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to provide documents on the sale of SAA.
The ruling was made by Judge Nathan Erasmus, who ordered Gordhan and the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) to provide Toto Investment Holdings with all confidential documents related to the sale of the government's 51% stake in SAA.
But the court turned down Toto Investment's application to stop the sale of shares of the national carrier with costs. Judge Erasmus ordered that the minister and the department provide non-confidential records and confidential ones, adding that parties in litigation be bound by confidentiality agreements.
In terms of the rules of the court, Gordhan and the department were forced to provide the record of the decision for the transaction, with only a part of the record being handed over to Toto Investment, while the minister argued that crucial parts could not be disclosed due to commercial sensitivity. The minister and the department had wanted to keep some of the documents confidential.
Monday's order followed an urgent application by Toto last Wednesday in a bid to force Gordhan to provide the records. The applicants also failed in their bid to have the court interdict the sale of shares to Takatso, which was dismissed with costs.
Early this year, South Africans reacted negatively to the news of the Takatso Consortium becoming the airline's majority owners in a deal that was seen as irregular and a slap to the country's nationalisation of state entities.
Last year, Takatso, made up of local aircraft Global Aviation and Harith General Partners, a pan-African investor in African infrastructure, was confirmed as the new majority owners of SAA, but the deal only went through this year after approval and finalisation by the minister and the department.
In June, Toto Investments took their bid to the Western Cape High Court in an effort for the current transaction to be declared "unlawful and constitutionally invalid" and moved to have Takatso's deal by its parent company, Harith, set aside.
Judge Erasmus ordered that these records had to be disclosed within 20 days of Monday's order and would then remain confidential, with parties to the litigation allowed to be present in court when they are finally aired in January 2023.
However, the judge has since dismissed the application with costs on several grounds, saying that Toto could have applied for an interdict last year when the sale was first announced but chose not to exercise that option. The judge added that the company also failed to join Takatso as a party, citing instead to approach its parent company Harith as a respondent.