As a sword hangs over the heads of top Transnet executives, group CEO Portia Derby and head of Transnet Freight Rail Sizakele Mzimela, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has turned up the heat and called publicly for the company’s top management to go. At the beginning of September, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan directed the board to undertake a wide-ranging review of the company’s performance. Among the issues he asked the board to address was to assess the executive management to "establish whether persons with the right skills are optimally utilised to deliver on the mandate". His directive was widely seen as a veiled call on the board to fire Derby and Mzimela, whom the business sector believes are largely responsible for Transnet’s precipitous decline. The poor performance of TFR has caused a bottleneck for commodity exports, resulting in announcements by mining companies to retrench workers. The board’s report was due to be delivered to Gordhan on Friday after it was granted a short extension. In a statement issued on Friday, organised labour added its voice to earlier calls by the Minerals Council and the Durban Chamber of Commerce to remove Derby and Mzimela.