State of Capture Report was inconclusive, and its contents cannot be used
ESKOM’S response to a letter by Roger Toms that was published in Business Report on March 6:
ROGER TOMS doesn’t offer anything of substance but a disguised eulogy for the evil system of apartheid. He waffles interminably about his impossible yearn for an unearned, rent-seeking, based on his skin colour, at the expense of more than 70 percent of the population.
Bare racism One credit to him is the fact that he has mustered the art of feigning a desire for prudent decision-making when the end of his proverbial spear is nothing short of bare racism. His words are laced with racist bile: “…one-time successful…”, “Inability to retain the staff necessary…”, “The expectation of Eskom to have all its coal supplied by black empowered mining houses is little short of mindless irresponsibility…”, “…crony system…”, “…the loss of its former reliability…”.
These words and phrases are patently racist and nothing else. Mr Toms is frustrated by Eskom’s efforts to extricate black people from the indignity caused by apartheid; he wishes them to languish in this mire for ever.
His poisonous rhetoric will not find favour with right-thinking citizens.
He decides to turn a blind eye to the fact that his lights have not gone off for over a year now due to Eskom stabilising under the new leadership.
Eskom chairman Dr Ben Ngubane has not been found, by any competent authority, to have acted irregularly or corruptly. Instead, it is under his leadership that South Africa has managed to eradicate load shedding and acquire a surplus instead.
The State of Capture report was admittedly inconclusive and therefore any responsible person would not use the contents thereof as though they were conclusive.
The work of the ad hoc committee on the SABC is currently under way and yet to be concluded by the requisite parliamentary authorities. In spite of these unassailable facts, Toms makes his self-serving conclusions about Dr Ngubane and Eskom. Toms should remember that the SABC started its meltdown in 2008. Its last profit was recorded in 2006 and subsequent to that it got closer to insolvency with each passing year until 2009, when it was rescued through a government guarantee of R1.64 billion.
Under Dr Ngubane, who assumed the chairmanship of the SABC in 2010, significant savings were realised to the extent that the loan of R1bn from Nedbank was repaid in record time. So if Toms wants to fulfil his desperate racist theories, he must at least be certain about his facts prior to spewing his vitriol. Toms states as a matter of fact that Eskom has refused to release the Dentons report. This is a bravefaced untruth!
Verifiable Eskom released the report following a media conference. This fact is verifiable via a simple Google search. Eskom’s current challenges are the direct consequence of the ineptitude of Toms’ venerated apartheid state. Energy planning had been earmarked for whites only, as blacks had systematically been excluded.
The current board is cleaning up this very toxic mess. It would be interesting to see how many letters Toms pushed in the 1980s complaining about the lack of a just energy policy that left the black majority in darkness and issues of incompetent planning that resulted in over-capacity leading to some of Eskom’s power stations being mothballed.
The State of Capture report was admittedly inconclusive and therefore any responsible person would not use the contents thereof… as conclusive.