This stems from cost orders awarded against Myeni after she lost a long-running case in which OUTA and the SAA Pilots’ Association successfully had her declared a delinquent director for life under section 162(5) of the Companies Act. The delinquency finding related to her conduct as SAA board chair (roughly 2012–2017), a period during which the airline suffered major losses. Myeni’s subsequent appeals and related applications were dismissed, generating further cost orders that were taxed at around R6.1–R6.2 million.
Timeline and key facts
- OUTA launched the sequestration application in July 2023 while Myeni was still alive. She opposed it.
- Myeni died on 14 June 2024. The Master of the High Court in Durban appointed an executrix (Thandeka Brenda Marcia Ngwenya N.O.) on 5 December 2024. The executrix was substituted into the proceedings and continued the opposition.
- On 14 August 2026, Judge N. Siwendu granted a provisional sequestration order placing the estate in the hands of the Master of the High Court, Pietermaritzburg. Reasons were delivered on 5 October 2026 (case Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse NPC v Myeni (10679/23) [2026] ZAKZPHC 99).
- A rule nisi was issued calling on the executrix and other interested parties to show cause on 6 November 2026 why the order should not be made final (and why the costs of the application should not be costs in the sequestration).
Recovery attempts and alleged undisclosed assets
While Myeni was alive, OUTA obtained a warrant of execution against her movable property. This realised only about R42,917. She made sporadic additional payments totalling no more than roughly R94,400. The bulk of the debt therefore remained unpaid.
OUTA argued there were reasonable grounds to believe assets or income may have been concealed or not fully disclosed, so that an independent trustee’s investigation could benefit creditors. It pointed to publicly available material from the State Capture Inquiry and other sources, including:
- Alleged failure to disclose earnings from directorships during her SAA tenure.
- Approximately R3.45 million received as a director of the Mhlathuze Water Board.
- Cash payments of around R300,000.
- Security upgrades to her immovable property valued at about R486,514.
- Potential benefits linked to her role as chairperson of the Jacob G. Zuma Foundation.
Estate position and court’s reasoning
The executrix submitted a liquidation and distribution (L&D) account reflecting an immovable property valued at roughly R4.9 million (subject to a R3 million loan), mainly medical and property-maintenance claims, and a residual balance of about R1.79 million available for distribution to Myeni’s children (the beneficiaries, including the executrix), each standing to receive around R597,000. Critically, OUTA’s R6.1 million claim did not appear in the L&D account.
Judge Siwendu held that OUTA had established a prima facie case for provisional sequestration under the Insolvency Act. Key points included:
- The existence of the liquidated debt was not genuinely in dispute.
- Attempts at ordinary execution had yielded only nominal results, so sequestration was a legitimate further means of execution.
- The omission of OUTA’s known claim from the estate account, combined with the absence of a comprehensive investigation into Myeni’s financial affairs, supported the view that sequestration could advantage creditors through independent scrutiny and orderly winding-up.
- The fact that an executor was already administering the estate under the Administration of Estates Act did not bar sequestration of proceedings that had begun during the deceased’s lifetime, nor was OUTA’s failure to lodge its claim in the ordinary estate process fatal to its status as a creditor.
Myeni (and later the executrix) had argued, among other things, that the costs were covered by an SAA indemnity linked to her directorship, that sequestration would cause severe personal prejudice (including potential loss of her home), that it amounted to an abuse of process or a punitive measure, and that ordinary execution remedies should suffice. The court rejected these as insufficient to defeat the provisional order.
Broader context and implications
This is a continuation of OUTA’s long accountability campaign against Myeni. The original delinquency case, launched in 2017, was a landmark public-interest success that set a precedent for holding state-owned enterprise directors to account. Myeni’s death did not extinguish the cost liability; the estate remains responsible.
Provisional sequestration opens the door to an independent trustee investigating the estate’s true asset position, potentially uncovering further recoveries for creditors (OUTA and any others, such as possibly ABSA or the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission). The final hearing on 6 November 2026 will determine whether the order is confirmed. If confirmed, the estate will be wound up under insolvency processes rather than ordinary deceased-estate administration, with creditors ranking ahead of residual distributions to beneficiaries.
The case illustrates the practical difficulties of enforcing large cost awards against individuals (or their estates) who have limited readily realisable assets, as well as the courts’ willingness to use sequestration as a tool when there is a reasonable prospect that independent investigation will benefit the body of creditors.
