The airline’s rescue practitioners, Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana, have already accepted the mining company’s offer to pay South African Airways (SAA) in exchange for access to its funds in Zimbabwe, but are waiting for the approval from the Department of Public Enterprises. In a letter to Imani on Wednesday, lawyers representing the rescue practitioners said discussions with the airline’s shareholders regarding the matter were ongoing. Should the government accept the offer from the chrome mining company, SAA would be able to repatriate around R350 million of its revenue from ticket sales and other activities from Zimbabwe. These funds had been blocked by Zimbabwe while it tried to contain its monetary challenges such as foreign currency shortages and rising inflation. The move to recoup the blocked funds comes amid continuing uncertainty about where the resources required to finance the cash-strapped airline’s rescue plan will come from. Although remaining mum on the details of the transaction, SAA’s rescue practitioners told the Mail & Guardian (M&G) that because the airline was under financial distress, any funding that could come into SAA would go a long way towards alleviating the distress. Matuson and Dongwana have, however, confirmed that the airline has not received any other offer apart from Imani’s to acquire the funds from Zimbabwe. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) funds are deemed to be blocked if companies are unable to transfer revenue from one place to another for a period of two months due to exchange controls imposed by the host government. Apart from exchange controls, funds may be blocked due to shortages of foreign currency, tax laws or the obligatory submission of documentary evidence of monthly activities required by some foreign countries. When funds are blocked, a local firm (such as Imani) can offer to pay part of the funds to the foreign firm (SAA in this case) in exchange for access to the local funds. In its final offer letter, Imani says it has over the past three years assisted JSE-listed companies to settle their foreign obligations through a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) approved mechanism. Considering the national carrier’s liquidity challenges, the mining company says its offer would be able to inject much-needed cash into the airline in a short period of time. The rescue practitioners rejected Imani’s initial offer of R50 million sent in August. But, puzzlingly, SAA’s unaudited financial statements for the year ending March 2019 and submitted to Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts in May show that R174 million in blocked funds are still in Zimbabwe. For the previous year, combined blocked funds from Angola, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire amounted to R687 million. In response to Imani’s initial offer, the airline’s rescue practitioners requested that Imani increases its offer to R630 million, which amounts to 70% of the funds held by the RBZ. In its final offer of R350 million, in September, Imani said the offer to SAA w