On May 19 last year, as the country was jumping between load-shedding stages 3 and 4, Eskom released a statement to notify the public about suspected cases of sabotage at Tutuka power station in Mpumalanga.
A forensic investigation report into the suspected sabotage incidents, which was seen by Business Day, confirms Eskom employees maliciously damaged a generation unit at Tutuka — one of the worst performing plants in the coal fleet, just as it was being returned to service after an outage.
Tutuka is one of a number of power stations that feature in the intelligence reports compiled as part of a private investigation launched last year by former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter to gather information on criminal syndicates suspected of operating within Eskom and in its supply chains.
The Eskom forensic report, based on an investigation into the damage done to unit 5 at Tutuka last year, points to poor access control at the station and a lack of security measures, which made it impossible for Eskom’s internal investigators to identify the culprits. The report, given to Eskom management in June 2022, concluded that a cable and a pipe in unit 5 of the plant were cut in a “deliberate, premeditated [way]” which “amounts to acts of sabotage”.
“The individual(s) responsible for this act knows the plant very well and knew exactly which components to disturb in order to ensure that the plant was not returned to service at the projected time thereby causing more distress and load-shedding,” the report said.
On Monday, May 16, while attempting to return the unit to service after an outage, technicians ran into trouble and later found that a cable supplying the steam valve with power had been severed.
The report said that while investigators could not identify the person responsible for cutting the cable, it was clear that this was done to prevent returning unit 5 to service.
No cameras
There were no CCTV cameras in the part of the plant where the cable was cut.
The cable was soon repaired, but on Tuesday, May 17, as work on returning the unit to service resumed, technicians again had to halt the process when it was found that a section of pipe that supplies control air pressure to several valves had been cut.
Even though the period during which this second act of sabotage took place could be narrowed to less than two hours, poor access control at the entrance to the plant and certain sections of it meant that the investigation team could not rely on gate access records to help identify suspects.
Last year, De Ruyter said that sabotage and corruption in Eskom’s coal supply chain — which sees high-grade coal destined for the utility being swapped for low-grade coal — was responsible for at least 1,000MW of unavailable generation capacity. This is equal to one stage of load-shedding.
As was previously reported in Business Day, information contained in the reports of an intelligence operation into corruption and organised crime in Eskom suggests that there are four cartels, with possible links to two cabinet members, involved in corruption and crime at Eskom — mainly in Mpumalanga.
One of the cartels, the Legendaries, is thought to be behind some of the sabotage and tender fraud seen at Tutuka.
Information gathered as part of the intelligence operation suggests that where acts of sabotage are carried out at the behest of the cartels, it is mainly for two reasons. It can be to force breakdowns and damage to plants that will set in motion a tender process for repairs from which the cartels will profit.
It was also alleged that these acts of sabotage could, in some cases, have been used as part of a campaign to discredit De Ruyter and to rally negative sentiment towards President Cyril Ramaphosa for the failure of the government to address load-shedding in the run-up to the ANC’s elective conference in December last year.
The forensic reports on sabotage at Tutuka show the difficulties Eskom’s own investigators and law enforcement encounter in identifying those responsible for acts of sabotage at power plants.
The Eskom investigators in the Tutuka case recommended that security be improved at the plant and that the State Security Agency should be brought in to take the matter further given that an act of sabotage at a national key point is a threat to national security.
After the incident, a case of sabotage was opened at the Standerton police station and this was later transferred to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks).
Business Day reached out to Eskom and to the Hawks in Mpumalanga, requesting an update on how the criminal investigation was proceeding, but neither was able to respond by the time of publication.
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