President Cyril Ramaphosa’s command of the Eskom crisis is best summed up in the story of three international trips. In January 2018, just weeks after he snatched victory from Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to emerge as ANC president, Ramaphosa issued an ultimatum to Jacob Zuma demanding the dismissal of the Eskom board.
That board, having presided over Eskom at a time when questions were being asked about who exactly was in charge of the state, was regarded by Ramaphosa as an extension of the state capture project the country needed to decisively step away from if it was to retain any credibility with the international investor market.
In Ramaphosa’s view, the legitimacy and credibility of the SA delegation heading to Davos at that stage hinged on the ability to clean out Eskom and assure the world that SA was serious about addressing the error of its ways in the management of state enterprises.
Importantly, since Ramaphosa was still deputy president of the country he was fresh from being relieved of his other critical duty — chairing the ANC’s redoubtable deployment committee. As we now know from the Zondo state capture commission, that committee plays an instrumental role in deciding who is politically palatable enough to be deployed to critical posts in the state.
It is a committee where — naturally — much of what eventually emerges as recommendations for appointment explicitly seeks to prioritise cadres of the movement on the assumption that it is only aligned cadres that can execute on ANC policy without frustrating the goals of the national democratic revolution.
With the bargaining power associated with his victory at Nasrec, Ramaphosa did indeed score the board of his own choosing, which was led by the late Jabu Mabuza. The key difference between this board and what preceded it was the cross-sectoral representation of political and business structures. In other words, the balance between those who actually knew what to do and those who knew the right politics was evident.
The urgency with which Ramaphosa assembled the board also indicated that he believed it to be a dysfunctional instrument of governance at a critical entity like Eskom. Since then the board has had to deal with the persistence of the most urgent crisis — load-shedding — while also unfortunately shedding members for various reasons. Since 2018, what was assembled as a board of 13 nonexecutives has paled into just six survivors. It is these survivors who have presided over the recent and most acute bout of consistent load-shedding.
In 2019, when Eskom first implemented stage 6 load-shedding, Ramaphosa abruptly terminated an overseas trip to “deal with the crisis”. After variously blaming sabotage, wet coal and state capture, he saw the exit of his preferred chair and deputy chair of the board — Mabuza and Sindi Mabaso-Koyana. That unfortunately heralded an exodus that has led to the sparse board now in place.
Surprisingly, in that period, Ramaphosa and his political overlord whose custody of state enterprises is barely enterprising — Pravin Gordhan — have been too busy to replenish the board. Rather, its oversight has been allowed to drift in spite of the board requesting additional members. Last week, as Ramaphosa abandoned another trip in response to stage 6 load-shedding, he managed to give the impression that he regarded this as an emergency that required no lesser an authority than the head of state himself to address it.
The fact that all we have got out of that crisis response is a cabinet meeting on Zoom and the proverbial Monday morning newsletter stating the obvious, indicates that while the president understands we are facing an emergency, neither he nor his cabinet have the faintest idea about what to actually do.
Exactly how a man who promised so much just four years ago has managed to be so overwhelmingly inept at every turn is the most enduring political mystery of our dark times.
• Sithole (@coruscakhaya) is an accountant, academic and activist.
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