EDITORIAL: Those feasting on Eskom’s supply chain should be eating prison food

In his incendiary interview with eNCA last week in which he first outlined his view of the scale of corruption at Eskom, former CEO André de Ruyter alleged that an unnamed minister had told him to be pragmatic and that “you have to enable some people to eat a little bit”.        ’

On Tuesday, we confirmed that we knew via our own sources what has been written elsewhere — that a security report commissioned by Eskom alleges that four criminal gangs operate in Mpumalanga. In our story, we added that the report alleges that two sitting members of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet are involved, that the syndicates use gangs of killers to enforce silence and to instil fear, and that they hatched a plan to ramp up load-shedding to derail the president’s re-election as leader of the ANC.

Today, this newspaper reveals some small examples of the culinary arts required to “eat” in Eskom’s vast supply chains — in this case at Tutuka power station, known for its woeful energy availability factor despite being a reasonably new plant.

If what the security report seen by Business Day alleges is true, it is an egregious betrayal of SA’s people. It is no mere intellectual concept that load-shedding is wrecking our economy and putting lives at risk. It is a source of appalling suffering in our country. Every business that closes is a tragedy. Every hour of school a child misses diminishes their future. Every crime committed in the dark is a source of trauma, and every tax rand not collected is a brick in the wall of a house that will not be built.

The picture drawn by the reports we have carried in the past two days of corruption at Eskom tells us that state capture is not over. If we discern it correctly, it is a picture of breathtaking contempt for the lives and dreams of all South Africans. It tells us that our life-changing tragedies are somebody else’s convenient political tool, that our dreams for our children are trumped by the need to “eat” by those who are least hungry.

Is it naive to ask for some justice? Perhaps, but surely if Business Day has seen these allegations against named individuals, then so have the police. It is time they did their job.