The Eskom board has decided to offer veteran ANC MP Brian Molefe his job back after his three-month sabbatical in Parliament. Some of President Jacob Zuma’s detractors claim to have incontrovertible evidence that the Saxonwold branch of the ANC was forced to redeploy him after the president was cowed by all the talk of junk status into reversing the decision of the Gupta family to crown Molefe finance minister after Pravin Gordhan’s dethronement.
However, my intrepid spies, Sore Throat and Undercover Sister, who have been shuttling between the Saxonwold shebeen and Megawatt Park, have told me a totally different story. Since they were wearing very stylish saris they bought at a Sahara computer outlet, I had no reason to doubt their version of events.
They insist the country’s indignation was misdirected when it was announced last Friday that Molefe was going back to that Gupta family franchise (their words, not mine) known to mere mortals as Eskom. They argued, quite persuasively, that our ire should be directed elsewhere.
It seems Molefe did not resign from Eskom in November 2016. No, it is not the date of resignation that Sore Throat and Undercover Sister are questioning. They argue that he took early retirement. If they are right, Molefe misled the public and, as the Guptas will tell you, that is simply not cricket.
If he took early retirement, the Eskom board must explain why it unlawfully granted it to him, knowing he did not qualify.
According to my two spies, the board seems to have relied on provisions that did not apply to Molefe — early retirement at 55 and a provision that relates to retrenchment. Molefe turned 50 in December 2016 and whether he resigned or took early retirement, he was certainly not retrenched. So the board and its chairman must explain why they granted Molefe an early retirement package knowing it was unlawful to do so. There is only one sensible explanation: corruption.
Furthermore, the spokesman of Eskom said on radio that the board had sought the advice of experts before it decided to reverse the decision to pay Molefe a R30m early retirement package. Lest we forget, Molefe resigned or retired 18 months after becoming the head honcho at Eskom. But he deserves the empathy of all who care about the plight of the elderly because the board reversed its decision after only R7m had already been deposited into his bank account. In the words of a famous song, "nice work if you can get it".
So, if Sore Throat and Undercover Sister are correct, I ask once more: why was the Eskom board so generously unlawful or unlawfully generous towards Molefe? And at whose behest did the Eskom board suffer this attack of generosity?
These are the questions Ben Ngubane and his board must answer. Offering an employee who has resigned his or her job back is not unlawful. But the circumstances under which Molefe is returning to Eskom stink to high heaven and, as you know, the stench has offended both the ANC and Malusi Gigaba, the newly appointed minister of finance, who is a former minister of public enterprises.
Those who supported Zuma at Polokwane were promised many things and they, in turn, promised many things. They were promised that the basic unit of political power in the party would be the ANC branch
So, what is the Molefe imbroglio really about? It is about the corrosive effect of corruption and patronage. Corruption is destroying the political power of the ANC.
Those who supported Zuma at Polokwane were promised many things and they, in turn, promised many things. They were promised that the basic unit of political power in the party would be the ANC branch. And they were promised that the ANC would be the strategic centre from which strategic and policy decisions would flow.
Today, however, the basic unit of power in the ANC is the rand. In pursuit of it, some ANC leaders have allowed corruption and patronage to destroy the party as a centre as well as the ANC centre.
As a result, the ANC is suffering from a dispersal of power as some of its leaders rent it out to powerful families and individuals, powerful interests in the global and domestic economy, syndicates and foreign interests.
They are compromising our democracy, the integrity of the state, national security and the national interest. In short, corruption and patronage are undermining constitutional, institutional, political and economic certainty. Because of corruption, patronage and the manner in which ANC leaders on different sides of the internal divide have made themselves available for capture by interests that are hostile to the historic mission of liberating the victims of apartheid colonialism, uncertainty has become a constant, and those who govern have lost the trust of those who are governed.
• Matshiqi is an independent political analyst.
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