Alet Pretorius/News24
Former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter claims that design criteria for systems at the Kusile power station were modified in order enable ANC-connected Hitachi Power Africa to win the project.
He further blamed South Africa’s energy issue on the endemic ANC-supported corruption at Eskom, and “evidence suggests” the ANC was exploiting the state-owned power firm as a “feeding trough”.
De Ruyter made the shocking charges during an interview with Annika Larsen on E-My tv’s Guest Tonight, which aired on Tuesday.
“If you look at the reasons for [the high likelihood of greater than stage 6 load-shedding this winter] — we lost three units at Kusile due to the collapse of a flue duct,” De Ruyter said.
“There was carry-over from the flue gas desulphurisation unit because the exhaust gas temperature from the boiler supplied by Hitachi [Power Africa] is too high.”
Van Ruyter emphasised Hitachi’s partnership with Chancellor House, the ANC’s investment arm.
“As will become apparent in the near future, there was substantial manipulation of design criteria in order to ensure that Hitachi got that tender,” he said.
“But, fact of the matter is, if the contract had initially been awarded correctly, without corruption, we would not have had the severity of load-shedding that we have right now.”
Kusile and Medupi both have 4,800MW nameplate capacity and six generating units.
If both power plants had been completed on time and their units had all been producing energy as expected, they would have avoided six to eight phases of load-shedding.
“Corruption is the gift that just can’t stop giving,” De Ruyter said.
It is not news that Chancellor House was established to support the ANC by taking a portion of some government contracts.
In 2006, the Mail & Guardian and the Centre for Security Studies discovered the connection between the ANC and Chancellor House.
In 2008, journalists discovered a conflict of interest when they discovered that then-Eskom board chair Valli Moosa also sat on the ANC’s fundraising committee.
When the contracts were granted to Hitachi and, by extension, Chancellor House, Moosa presided over the board.
The ANC and Hitachi have both categorically denied any wrongdoing.
If De Ruyter’s claims are true, they might provide critical proof against the legitimacy of the purchase and the persons who aided in its completion.
At the same time, News24 says that Eskom’s senior management is pushing to cancel a contract with legal firm Bowmans to probe misconduct at the power provider.
The contract is presently renegotiable.
Bowmans collaborated with the Special Investigative Unit to identify a fraudulent network inside Eskom’s Group Capital Division that helped extract billions of rands through the Kusile project, according to the report.
According to the study, Bowmans identified hundreds of contracts and tenders worth over R170 billion that they suspected of being dishonest.
The ANC refused to openly respond to De Ruyter’s claim that Kusile’s design requirements were modified, resulting in South Africa’s current dilemma.
It also alleged De Ruyter was seeking to transfer blame and labelled his claims “baseless”.
Hitachi Power Africa did not reply to a request for comment.