Hard to take minister of the dark seriously

Standing on a chair surrounded by a crowd of Eskom workers, the recently appointed minister of electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, seemed very much like a man on the campaign trail. As the minister makes his rounds of Eskom’s power stations countrywide, his message to workers is the same everywhere he goes: neither he, nor God, will save SA from darkness, but the utility’s 42,000-strong workforce will.

If anyone in SA needs a boost in morale it is certainly honest, hard-working Eskom employees who have no power to influence the decisions and actions that made their place of work one of the largest risks to the country’s economy and stability.

But not all of them are honest and hard-working. Some are part of the problem. We know this and they know this, so why is it that the minister doesn’t seem to?

The utility’s chair, Mpho Makwana, despite being dismissive of former CEO André de Ruyter’s revelations about large-scale, politically connected organised crime networks operating within Eskom, acknowledges that crime and corruption are a problem.

In an interview earlier this month, he said most Eskom workers want to earn an honest living, but acknowledged some are involved in tender fraud and sabotage. He said Eskom is fighting back against unscrupulous maintenance contractors.

For Ramokgopa to say that apart from a few isolated cases SA’s electricity crisis has nothing to do with corruption seriously calls into question his sincerity. Even Eskom’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers, has called out the minister, saying that corruption is very much to blame for the energy crisis.

Any politician who downplays the seriousness of crime when speaking to an SA crowd risks insulting the audience. Top business leaders are speaking openly about how organised crime is threatening their operations. This week mining bosses such as Thungela’s July Ndlovu and Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s Steve Phiri told of how their mines are being targeted.

On Tuesday, Phiri said organised crime affects just about every industry. Companies have to spend a fortune on private security “because the police are nowhere to be found”. Thungela, said Ndlovu, is fighting “highly sophisticated” criminals.

Ramokgopa might be earnest in his intention to see to it that things are turned around at Eskom. But how will he solve the problem if he doesn’t want to call it by its name?