Eskom faces eighth inquiry in 10 years
Parliament will next week launch an inquiry into the leadership and governance crisis at Eskom, when the public enterprises portfolio committee starts with preparations for the investigation and related matters before calling for submissions from the utility and the Public Enterprises Department.
This will be the eighth investigation into governance and operational problems at Eskom in the past 10 years.
Principal among them were the 2015 Dentons investigation into the utility’s operational meltdown and the 2012 Special Investigating Unit’s probe into serious maladministration and improper and unlawful conduct by senior officials and board members.
All seven probes were abandoned at critical stages, or the reports were never made public, with no discernible action taken against those implicated.
While the Eskom board had not received a formal notification of the latest inquiry, it would welcome any investigation into its affairs, spokesman Khulani Qoma said.
The parliamentary inquiry should also focus on Molefe’s reappointment and allegations that the minister had misled Parliament, the DA’s Natasha Mazzone said.
“For far too long, good governance practices at Eskom have crumbled under the watch of [Public Enterprises] Minister [Lynne] Brown, its executives and board members, while the Gupta-ANC mafia has pillaged public money at the utility and other public enterprises alike.”
In March 2015, Eskom was plunged into a crisis when the board suspended its four senior executives in order to conduct an investigation into the operational crisis that afflicted the
utility starting in 2007, when the first bout of load shedding hit.
The crisis escalated into daily power rationing, resulting in a financial meltdown that resulted in the power utility running out of cash to pay salaries, forcing the government to intervene with an R83bn bailout in September 2015.
But this escalated in 2016, when new CE Brian Molefe was implicated in alleged wrongdoing in the public protector’s report on state capture.
The public protector flagged as inappropriate Molefe’s 56 cellphone conversations with members of the Gupta family, as well as his alleged visits to the family’s residence during the time the controversial family’s companies were negotiating to buy an Eskom coal supplier.
In the wake of the State of Capture report, and in tears, Molefe resigned in December, vowing to clear his name. But in dramatic fashion, the board decided in May, under the leadership of Ben Ngubane, to return Molefe to his former job.
Despite public statements to the contrary — and Molefe having taken up a job as an MP — the board claimed Molefe had, in fact, never resigned. Brown instructed the board to rescind the appointment.
His temporary replacement, Matshela Koko, also fell foul of good governance principles in an alleged nepotism scandal in 2017. He took leave while his conduct is being probed.
The Eskom board has also been under scrutiny since March 2015, with the suspensions of the then newly appointed CE Tshediso Matona and three other executives.