No pilots and engineers = no aircraft fly = no revenue generated. The same could be said about other operations within the structure but I doubt any of them could do the pilots' job while the pilots and engineers could possibly muddle along in theirs. Also, no one would miss management for a fair bit until someone remarked on how smoothly things are running...
The aircrew are the workers on the coalface and while the support structure is necessary it appears much larger than it needs to be at SAA.