Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has called into question the commitment by former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter to curbing load-shedding during his three years at the helm of the entity.
Gordhan suggested to parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday that De Ruyter spent most of his time doing other things, than attending to the energy crisis.
He levelled sharp criticism at De Ruyter, implying on several occasions that he had been more concerned with gathering material for his book than he was with doing his job. De Ruyter, he said, failed to comply with a clause in his contract which required “confidentiality about the affairs of the institution he served” choosing to instead “write chapter and verse about events that have been taking place in the company”.
Gordhan also accused De Ruyter of using apartheid-era “swart gevaar tactics”, when National Party leaders “mobilised white voters by characterising those of us that were activists in the 1980s and 1990s as terrorists”.
The minister was referring to comments De Ruyter made during the eNCA interview about ANC politicians.
De Ruyter said: “They still address one another [at Luthuli House] as ‘comrade’, which is frankly embarrassing.
“They use words like ‘lumpen proletariat’, which is ridiculous, because these things were last said in 1980s East Germany.”
According to Gordhan, with these comments De Ruyter had taken the country back to the 1980s to "‘swart gevaar’ tactics by labelling all of us as communists, as people who are mindless, and people for whom the hammer and sickle must be drawn in our parking bays”.
"[This is] the worst insult that anyone can cast on South Africans who want this country to work, who want Eskom to work, and who want load-shedding to end,” Gordhan said.
Gordhan appeared before Scopa to answer allegations made by De Ruyter during an interview aired on eNCA on February 21, in a presentation to Scopa in April, and in his new book, Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom.
Of particular interest to Scopa were De Ruyter’s claims that he told Gordhan the names of two top politicians allegedly implicated in the sabotage.
This information was based on a privately funded probe done by former police commissioner George Fivaz’s company, Forensic & Risk (Fivaz).
Gordhan said he will not reveal the names of any individuals who featured in an intelligence investigation initiated by former Eskom CEO for their alleged involvement in corruption and sabotage at Eskom.
De Ruyter mentioned the project to him in June 2022, said Gordhan, but they never discussed it “at any length”.
"[De Ruyter] operated on his own free will, and it seems he was busy writing a book rather than focusing on his job of keeping power stations going.”
Gordhan said he was shown a diagram with lots of names on it, but he would not “name names and implicate or smear the reputation of others without [these allegations being backed up] by verifiable facts”.
While confirming De Ruyter had informed him about the probe, Gordhan denied he had instructed De Ruyter to launch a project to gather intelligence on graft and sabotage at Eskom.
This was in response to information given to Scopa by the former Eskom interim chair Malegapuru Makgoba last week.
Makgoba told Scopa that Gordhan was the person who suggested to De Ruyter that Eskom should “gather some intelligence”, because “Eskom was besieged [by corruption].”
He might have told De Ruyter to get more information about specific incidents of sabotage, but it was “absolutely wrong” and misleading to suggest this amounted to approving a “R50m private intelligence-gathering operation”, Gordhan said.
He suggested to the committee that De Ruyter’s allegations were being used to discredit individuals in the run-up to the general elections in 2024. “Clearly it is the governing party that is under attack and that suits the purposes of electioneering.”
One of the allegations, for which De Ruyter is being sued for by the ANC, include saying that evidence suggested Eskom was a feeding trough for the ANC and being told by one minister that he should “enable some people to eat a little bit”.
Gordhan told Scopa he never said anything to that effect to De Ruyter, however he did acknowledge “links between Chancellor House and some projects that have been undertaken [by Eskom]”.
The ANC investment firm Chancellor House owned a 25% stake in the local subsidiary of the global engineering company Hitachi. This company, Hitachi Power Africa, won contracts to supply boilers for Medupi and Kusile power stations.
“Certainly there needs to be separation between the state and the party and hopefully we will move more in that direction,” he said.
Update: May 17 2023
This story has been updated with new information.
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