INTERVIEW — Andre De Ruyter says initial police investigators in poisoning case were ‘out of their depth’

De Ruyter related the piss-poor police handling of his case during an interview on the sidelines of the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town. 

“There was an initial investigation where two detective sergeants came and took down my statement. I terminated that because it became clear to me that these detectives were poorly prepared and out of their depth. So I terminated that and now it’s being investigated by the Hawks,” De Ruyter said. 

So the Group Chief Executive (GCE) of South Africa’s most important SOE, which is the biggest threat to the economy, says there has been an attempt on his life and the police send a pair of keystone cops to investigate. It’s like something out of a Coen Brothers’ movie — a farcical example of state failure. 

And the criminal threat to Eskom is real. 

“The crime is bad, we know there are at least four criminal syndicates operating in Mpumalanga in our plants and they are involved in the theft of coal and the deliberate damage to plants leading to maintenance callouts. In some instances, there was increased overtime paid to union members. And these are very large, very organised criminal syndicates,” De Ruyter said. 

When asked how dangerous such syndicates were, he said: “There are frequent assassinations that take place in Mpumalanga. It’s not reported but it’s definitely linked to contracts being awarded or not awarded.”

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He said the people being murdered were those who “work for the opposing company who got the job and you didn’t get it. So there’s a real culture there of fear and intimidation. We know that police have arrested, belatedly after a lot of pushing and prodding from our side, 25 people connected with theft of coal and they have shut down three illegal blending sites and we understand there are 30 more of these blending sites.

“This is where they take our good coal, they offload it, and then they replace our coal with discard coal which is essentially just rock with a bit of coal mixed in. And that doesn't burn so well first of all and, secondly, it damages our equipment, so that’s a major contributor to load shedding.” 

Crime and insecurity have been common themes at the Indaba, casting host South Africa and its mining sector in an unflattering light.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Sibanye’s Froneman says SA’s mining sector is being hammered by the scourge of crime”

“I’ve been quite vocal about coal theft for a long time and it’s been quite an effort to get law enforcement to do what they’re supposed to. The fact that these illegal blending operations have been allowed to operate with impunity for years, what does that say about the state of our security,” De Ruyter said. 

Returning to his poisoning, De Ruyter reiterated that he believes that it was a deliberate attempt on his life and that he “got lucky”. 

When asked if he now took a thermos to the office, he replied that he picked up cups at random. DM/BM