Why do people always compare the losses caused by corruption/inefficiency/fraud/crime to the number of RDP houses you could have bought with the money? Hell, R17bn could buy every man, woman and child in this entire country a case of beer!
You can't privatise SAA - its too far gone. To make it efficient you would need government guarantees for restructuring because you would have to thoroughly audit the entire operation which takes time, which would presumably lead to you retrenching about half of the staff and restructuring the whole company. And as has been said, with SA's ridiculous AA policies it is destined to fail.
About ten years ago on here I said to watch SAA - it is a microcosm of the country as a whole - what happens at SAA will happen or is happening to SA in general. Destination? Down the tubes. Unless the affirmative action policies are changed, it's tickets.