De Ruyter cannot just sashay into the sunset on his plane after dropping his Eskom corruption bombshells

Dear DM168 readers,

The explosive interview that recently resigned Eskom CEO André De Ruyter had with Anneke Larsen on eTV cannot be left hanging like dirty laundry on South Africa’s saggy washing line.

I sincerely hope that De Ruyter has evidence for his bombshells that about R1-billion a month is still being lost to corruption, and that Eskom is still a feeding trough for the ANC. 

And I especially hope that he has the courage and evidence to report to the Hawks, the NPA and its Independent Directorate, whoever the senior ANC politician he alleges is a kingpin in the pillage of Eskom and the minister, that he claims, knows about it. 

If De Ruyter just sashays into the sunset on his plane to somewhere far, far away from the dangerous murky mess he spoke of, without handing over details to be investigated and prosecuted, then his tell-all on Tuesday would be seen as the sour grapes of a failed CEO, the silver fox who tried but failed in his mandate to fix the power utility.  

Only those in the ANC who seek scapegoats for their own failures will blame De Ruyter for the Stage 6 verging on Stage 7 rolling blackouts bout that has beset us during his truncated term as CEO.

Those like Minister of Minerals and Energy Gwede Mantashe, who accused Eskom of agitating to overthrow the state by not attending to rolling blackouts.

Wilfully fleecing Eskom

This is not just absurdly laughable but ironic because the only people responsible for rolling blackouts are the saboteurs and crooks who are wilfully fleecing Eskom, like the person De Ruyter mentioned was found buying kneeguards worth R320 a pair for R80,000 a pair, but was released by the police.

We also know from Thabo Mbeki, the only ANC president I can recall who apologised to the public, that our energy woes stem from the ANC not listening to Eskom leadership at the turn of the century, who warned that government needed to invest more in electricity to keep up with the country’s rapid growth and the electrification needs of the majority of the population who were neglected during apartheid.

“Eskom was right and government was wrong,” Mbeki said.

The problem is when the ANC did act to build new coal-fired power stations, they acted in self-interest.  

In 2015, Hitachi Ltd was fined $19-million by the Securities and Exchange Commision for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, when it inaccurately recorded improper payments to the ANC, in connection with contracts to build Medupi and Kusile. What happened to the ANC in regard to this? Nothing. We the people voted the party back into power over and over again.  

So Fikile Mbalula, Pravin Gordhan and the Eskom Board chair are all totally disingenuous with their outrage at De Ruyter’s revelations of Eskom being an ANC feeding trough. They know it. We know it. De Ruyter failed to fix it. His poor predecessor Phakamani Hadebe collapsed twice at work and suffered ill health, as a result of just a year into trying to fix it. 

Read more on Daily Maverick: ‘We challenge you’ – ANC’s Fikile Mbalula calls on André de Ruyter to provide evidence for ‘baseless’ corruption claims at Eskom

Whoever is the next CEO of Eskom is set up to fail over and over again because it seems there is really no political will from the leaders of the party whose members, friends and family extract benefit from fleecing the utility.  

And it’s not just the fleecers who stand in the way of attempts to fix Eskom. Towering over it all is Minister Pravin Gordhan, who despite the government’s decision to unbundle Eskom into distribution, generation and transmission, appears to have been a stumbling block to its implementation.  

One of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s energy advisors Anton Eberhard wrote as much in Business Day: “The president initially invested much political capital in persuading social partners that unbundling Eskom made economic sense. Yet Gordhan has always been less than enthusiastic, preferring a Band-Aid to Eskom’s ill-health rather than radical surgery, his ideological worldview clouding a clear appreciation of the benefits of structural reforms.”

When De Ruyter spoke of ANC ministers speaking a Marxist-Leninist  language last heard in the 80s, he could easily have been referring to Gordhan. We know he also bumped heads with other SOE heads such as former SAA CEO Vuyani Jarana, who left saying that one of his key areas of concern was the slow speed of decision-making, and the high levels of bureaucracy, as well as former Post Office CEO Mark Barnes.

This is the ANC’s broad church conundrum. It speaks about the need to modernise, corporatise and privatise, its members rush to feed off the tender trough and indulge in the most crass conspicuous consumption, but its leadership is stuck in its mindset that only the state can deliver. 

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How can you cling to this belief in the throes and aftermath of state capture, with all the SOEs and state departments falling around you like dominoes, defies sense or logic? But there you have it. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do think the state, if well-managed and staffed with caring and competent professionals who have an ethos of serving the people, can have a positive role to play. But the state does not have the hegemony on thought or innovation to fix our problems.

Free market and trickle-down economics

I am not one of those who believes in the alternative of an unfettered, free market and trickle-down economics, where the rich get richer and the poor get screwed, but GDP looks good on paper. 

I also don’t think referring to thugs and criminals as lumpenproletariat is as strange or as arcane as André de Ruyter made it to be in his interview. He clearly was not exposed to economic or sociological debates between liberals and marxists when he studied at the University of Pretoria or Unisa.

I hope that de Ruyter’s interview and exit does not amplify polarised racist thinking, or end debates on how to improve the lives of people living within a free and democratic society.

Socialism  or social democracy as ideas are not the bogeymen here – it is greed and corruption, and the mafiosa myopia of steal now and don’t worry about the future that is the problem.

We need open minds that go beyond ideological isms and entrenched positions to solve the giant hairy problems of inequality, jobless growth and invasive corruption that our country faces. 

The one cause of our current energy woes that I do not think the ANC should ever apologise for, is ensuring that black people who were kept in darkness by apartheid, were given access to electricity. 

Today’s challenge is how to keep the lights on for all of us without choking our economy, our environment and our sanity. I hope for all of our sakes that the people we vote into power next year understand this.

Read our astute economics Business Maverick writer Ray Mahlaka on the impact of De Ruyter’s revelations on Eskom’s future in this week’s DM168. 

And as usual, I invite you to join the debate on how to fix what’s broken in our country beyond the entrenched ideological isms that prevent us from seeing eye to eye or listening to alternative views. Write to me at [email protected]

Yours in defence of truth and light

Heather 

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.