As he prepares to leave Eskom as CEO, Andre De Ruyter has hit back at the ruling party for seeing the power utility as an ‘eating trough’.
De Ruyter said the available evidence shows that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) sees the embattled power utility as means of making money.
In a broad-sweeping interview with journalist Annika Larsen on Tuesday evening (21 February), the embattled CEO conceded to failing to prevent load shedding in South Africa.
He also mentioned issues such as entrenched corruption within the government and governance around the power generator.
“I expressed my concern to a senior government minister about attempts – in my view – to water down governance around the $8.5 billion US dollars that, by and large through Eskom intervention, we got at COP26,” he said.
“The response was essentially, ‘you know, you have to be pragmatic – in order to pursue the greater good, you have to enable some people to eat a little bit’. So yes, I think it is entrenched.”
The CEO did not mention which minister he approached but confirmed that they were still in government.
“When we pointed out that there was one particular high-level politician that was involved in this, the minister in question looked at the senior officials and said, ‘I guess it was inevitable that this would come out anyway’. Which suggests that this wasn’t news (to them),” he said.
“They want what will win them the next election – not what will keep the country going for the next two decades.
“I think that balance has been disturbed by turning Eskom into a state-owned entity under the direct control of the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE).
“That department has played a very interventionist role, micromanagement even, at Eskom.”
He said the root cause of this is the governing party’s roots in communism, which focuses on state control and is something that confuses diplomats and disincentivises investment.
“There’s a narrative that the state should control everything. Unfortunately, the ghosts of Marx and Lennin haunt the halls of Lethuli House. People are still firmly committed to a 1980s-style ideology. They still address one another as comrades,” he added.
“When such individuals talk to foreign diplomats and foreign investors, the puzzlement with which they leave those meetings is really a detriment to South Africa’s credibility. People say ‘we haven’t heard this kind of language since the fall of the Berlin Wall – what does this mean? How do these people think?’”
BusinessTech reports that Eskom is now under siege by high-level criminality, from syndicates that steal coal, diesel, and infrastructure to dodgy contracts and procurement irregularities.
“There is very little explanation for the vociferous opposition to the Just Energy Transition,” he said.
“There are so many vested interests in the coal value chain that the threat of decarbonisation – even though we’re talking about a multi-decade move away from coal – that is why it is so eagerly opposed.”
