‘NEW’ (SAME OLD) ESKOM BOARD

ynne Brown, the public enterprises minister, has rudely demonstrated at every opportunity she’s had over the past four years how little she thinks of the people who buy electricity from Eskom. She’s likely to do so again within weeks, appointing the clueless and unemployable Zethembe Khoza as Eskom’s full-time chair.

That won’t surprise readers of this magazine. Nor will it shock the markets, which are owed R471bn by Eskom, through its bonds. Investors will just see this as yet another of SA Inc’s stupid deeds likely to earn the country an almost inevitable credit downgrade.

Again, Brown has promised to appoint another “new” board to oversee the affairs of the electricity utility. Don’t expect there to be anything new about it. It will be the same tired lie, in which a Gupta stooge rubber stamps yet another appointment of a fellow stooge, no doubt arranged at the Saxonwold Shebeen.

This isn’t the first time Brown has peddled that story about a “new board”. In June, she said she would do just this, but then hired Khoza as interim chairman.

That new board, to be appointed in November, will be the fourth Brown has appointed since she took over from another Gupta stooge, Malusi Gigaba, as public enterprises minister in 2014. The chairman will be the fourth appointed since Zola Tsotsi held that position in just four years. Over that time, Eskom has had no fewer than six people doing the CEO’S job.

Tsotsi — a man as incompetent as he was mysteriously arrogant — lost the confidence of his colleagues in March 2015, when he zealously removed the top four Eskom executives to pave the way for the industrial-scale looting of Eskom that ensued.

Presiding over that looting project since March

2015 was Tsotsi’s replacement, Ben Ngubane. Finally, in May, Ngubane quit, after his disastrous handling of the Brian Molefe “retirement” debacle emerged.

LSo Brown immediately appointed Khoza as the acting chair. It was as if she’d been scouring the utility for the worst people she could possibly find. Khoza has not a single accomplishment to his credit — just like Tsotsi and Ngubane before him. While Ngubane has the dubious honour of having served the Kwazulu Bantustan government, his list of accomplishments is nonexistent. Chairing the SABC during Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s ruinous reign didn’t help.

Tsotsi was little better when Gigaba inexplicably pulled him from the obscurity of Lesotho’s electricity utility to chair Eskom. (Tsotsi has since ducked back over the Drakensberg after being axed by Eskom.)

In the interest of state capture?

Khoza will follow in these footsteps. He failed so dismally as the head of customer service at Telkom that he had to leave (involuntarily) in 2013. For Eskom, this was apparently a badge of honour; Khoza’s failure in the less demanding role of overseeing Telkom’s call centre was, within months, rewarded with a promotion to the Eskom board by Gigaba.

Why would Brown appoint such a person to be chair — unless she’s been told to? Why else but to keep the state capture project rolling on?

It makes sense: Khoza has proven himself to be a useful idiot who unquestioningly carries out instructions. It won’t be a surprise if his first job as chairman will be to ensure the Gupta-linked firms, including Mckinsey and Trillian, never have to repay the R1.6bn they were paid by Eskom (when Khoza chaired Eskom’s tender committee). Of course, the whole country will pay for it with a credit downgrade and a likely R180bn flight in capital from our market.

Then he’s likely to make accomplished liar Matshela Koko the next CEO, once Koko’s sham disciplinary hearing ends in November. After that, the Stooge-inchief will no longer need either Khoza or Brown.

Khoza chaired the tender committee when Eskom paid Guptalinked firms, including Mckinsey and Trillian, R1.6bn