ANC feeds off the chaos

Anyone who reads André De Ruyter’s book, ‘Truth To Power’, gets the inside view on how stateowned enterprises (SOEs) are run after 30 years of ANC governance.

It is clear for anybody reading this book that the ANC uses state companies to run a parallel economic system. This economy does not run on efficiency of labour, cost effectiveness or value for money. It runs on a shadowy term of condoned corruption/inefficiencies that is only enabled because the state owns it.

The lack of state action against coal mafia groups/Eskom staff listed by De Ruyter’s private investigation is telling. Consider the state of the power stations, where the then CEO must pick up papers off the floor, and himself investigate corruption and manage damage investigations.

The fact that there has been more than R4bn of avoidable damage to equipment, which resulted in load-shedding costing the country 10 times that, shows how broken it is.

It’s in the ANC’s interest to keep the chaos going in all municipalities and SOEs, as its cadres and the new class of tenderpreneurs need to be fed. All it had to do, as public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has in effect done, is harness taxpayers’ money using the excuse of bailouts (SAA got R50bn, plus more to come).

This feeds the false economy, but when we have rolling electricity cuts for 15 years on a downward spiral it is not so easy to hide it or blame others. The old Eskom board and CEO were capable, but they could not produce miracles. Gordhan was told by De Ruyter in 2021 that SA needed 5,000MW more, yet he scolded him and the government wasted another three years. Privatisation is the answer to destroy this cancer the ANC created, but then how would it feed?

Rob Tiffin Cape Town