Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan. Picture: Leon Lestrade African News agency (ANA)
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has thrown former Eskom Group CEO André de Ruyter under the proverbial bus, dismissing all the allegations he made about his alleged participation in crippling the struggling power utility.
Presenting himself before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) in Parliament, Gordhan denied De Ruyter’s assertion that he had asked de Ruyter to gather intelligence around incidents of sabotage at Eskom.
Gordhan painted a picture of De Ruyter as an executive who went about his duties at Eskom in a manner unbecoming of good corporate governance while busy writing the book he published over the weekend.
De Ruyter shocked South Africa over the weekend by publishing a 237-page “tell-all” book titled “Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom” detailing an array of measures he tried but failed to implement in stamping out corruption at Eskom.
The minister first dealt with De Ruyter’s allegation that, as the shareholder representative, Gordhan was interfering with power station management and micromanaging Eskom by being directly involved in various issues of procurement, including that of diesel.
Gordhan said he did not interfere in Eskom’s executive management but was rather acting as an ‘’active facilitator” to ensure that Eskom got the required diesel from PetroSA in order to deal with load shedding.
“Unfortunately, I have to characterise this as absolute nonsense. There was no micromanaging. One would suggest very plainly and emphatically that there was no micromanagement, as far as I am concerned,” Gordhan said.
“There was no interference with the work of the CEO or of any senior manager at Eskom. If that is the excuse in books or interviews for the lack of performance, then it is a pitiful excuse to be utilised.
“I think what we have is a CEO who thought he was know-all, and he certainly hadn’t worked in a power station situation before. So I refute any assertion and any allegation of giving instructions.
“I am told that I instructed a middle-manager at Koeberg (Nuclear power station). I don’t know anybody at Koeberg to give instructions to. So I go, at this instance, perpetrate a particular lie in order to undertake whatever character assassination this individual thinks he is engaged in.”
Gordhan then moved swiftly to deal with allegations made to Scopa by former Eskom’s interim chairperson Professor Malegapuru Makgoba that it was Gordhan’s idea to conduct intelligence gathering to combat corruption at Eskom.
This is with regards to the controversial R50 million privately funded intelligence-driven operation, which found that crime cartels were bleeding Eskom of at least R1 billion a month in corruption, allegedly with the help of a senior politician.
However, the report was never tabled before the current board of Eskom.
Makgoba last week said Gordhan had told De Ruyter to “gather some intelligence somehow” in order to be on top of the problem but did not say it must be done in the manner De Ruyter did.
“I refute what Professor Makgoba is saying. With great respect to him, he has got it absolutely wrong. Prof Makgoba is misleading and misinforming Scopa and the public as well,” Gordhan said.
He then moved back to De Ruyter and indicated that the former CEO had not sought any approval from him to pursue this intelligence-driven operation, and he had mentioned it “in passing” only six months after the fact.
“As far as the so-called De Ruyter project is concerned, he did not discuss the project with me at any length,” Gordhan said.
“He merely, in passing, said: “I am doing this because the law-enforcement guys are not coming to the party, and I’m not using Eskom’s money. I’m raising the money privately, and I’ve told the chair about it.” What he told the chair, I don’t know about it.
“He was operating on his free will, so to speak, on this project and, of course, at the same time, it seems he was writing a book as well other than focusing on his job of keeping power stations going and providing electricity.”
Gordhan also insinuated that De Ruyter violated his Eskom employment contract and had gone rogue by publishing a book with minute details of what was happening at Eskom.
“There’s a Clause 15 in his contract that he signed when he was employed as CEO, which requires confidentiality in terms of the affairs of the institution that he served,” Gordhan said.
“In no big institution like Eskom and the private sector, would you have a CEO who has left for whatever reason going and writing chapter and verse about events that have been taking place, within the company itself?
“But he seemed to have remembered, for some reason, in particular the 1980s, and taken the country back to “swart-gevaar” tactics by labelling all of us as communists, as people who are mindless, as people for whom a hammer and sickle must be drawn in our parking bays, which is the worst insult which anyone can cast on South Africans.”
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