Early in March, as SA’s response to the energy crisis sank deeper into chaos after the declaration of the disastrously unnecessary state of disaster and the appointment of an electricity minister (without a job description), another initiative was rolled out.
The Resource Mobilisation Fund, a R100m commitment by business to assist in addressing the energy crisis, was launched. The fund’s aim was to mobilise resources of government and private sector to better co-ordinate and fund the efforts of the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom).
The Necom had been assembled in July 2022 to bring to life the president’s Energy Action Plan. As one could have predicted, the intentions of the Necom were not matched by funding and resource capacitation. As a result, its best efforts to address the crisis were crystallised in its six month report released in January.
In that report, the Necom indicated that all it had done was pretty much take stock of what had already been pending — the amendment of the Electricity Regulation Act to lift licensing conditions for generation projects; and assembling yet another team of experts to “work closely with Eskom to diagnose problems at power stations”. And issuing instructions to other departments to actually do their jobs by cutting red tape.
The decision by business to raise funds for the Necom therefore represented the best chance for the committee to attempt anything substantive. The financing of partnerships between the state, business and ordinary members of society was revived during the Covid crisis when the Solidarity Fund was launched. Before that, the idea of pouring money into government initiatives had become taboo due to the inefficiencies and corruption that bedevilled many state-aligned initiatives.
What made the Solidarity Fund different was the level of transparency and proactive monitoring of the funds so that all stakeholders knew what resources were being used, for what purpose, at each interval.
Like the Solidarity Fund, the Resource Mobilisation Fund received support from other business formations such as Business Unity SA and Business Leadership SA (BLSA). The former is involved in the governance of the fund and provides back-office support services. In its statement of support, BLSA emphasised that it drew a sense of comfort from the fact that the fund “will operate at the highest levels of ethics, integrity and transparency”.
In light of this, many citizens would have been surprised by the discovery that BLSA had funded a clandestine investigation at Eskom that was unknown to almost everyone except the CEOs of Eskom and BLSA — André de Ruyter and Busi Mavuso, who simultaneously served as a member of the Eskom board. The discovery of this covert investigation, whose outcomes verge on innuendo and meaningless speculation rather than substantive discovery, has been precipitated by the exit of De Ruyter and his assertions about entrenched malfeasances at Eskom. The problem with this opaque process is that it revives the long-standing anxieties around private funding of what should be independent state organisations.
Given Mavuso and De Ruyter’s roles as board members of Eskom, the outsourcing of the investigation to an undeclared investigation entity that was not part of Eskom’s approved forensics service providers amounts to an illustration of the best of intentions being undermined by grave disregard of the governance protocols of the entity.
For BLSA this episode comes soon after its ill-conceived reintegration of Bain, despite the universal consensus that the consultancy has never fully atoned for its state capture sins. As more missteps materialise from an organisation uniquely governed by the most prominent business minds in the country, serious questions have to be asked about their own understanding of how the current governance crisis in the country germinated and grew more pervasive and entrenched.
• Sithole (@coruscakhaya) is an accountant, academic and activist.
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