New Eskom chair is no joke — is he?
APRIL fool! Not. So let me see if I have this right: a person who only just survived the night of the long knives of the previous dysfunctional, fractured Eskom board, someone whose tenure running the board of the SABC was so appalling that he was forced out of that position, has just been appointed to chair the national power utility? Pull the other one. Seriously? If the announcement of Ben Ngubane’s appointment as chairman of Eskom had come just 24 hours later, it would have been dismissed as an April Fools’ joke.
Does anyone making decisions at the top of Eskom have even the slightest idea what it is they are tinkering with? This is not the SABC or even SAA, where bad management decisions can be papered over by diligent operational staff.
This is the very life-support machine of the economy and right now it feels like the governing party is standing on its oxygen supply.
What next? Hlaudi Motsoeneng as the next CEO of Eskom? He could probably rustle up an electrical engineering degree from somewhere. Not that it’s necessary to even pretend to have one.
No sooner had Ngubane been named than it emerged Eskom had submitted its tariff-increase application to the energy regulator Nersa for an effective 25.3% increase for this year. How convenient that the feisty CEO of Nersa, Phindile Baleni, wife of trade unionist Frans, was moved to help Gauteng premier David Makhura run his province just a couple of months ago.
Ngubane, 73, and his then deputy Thami ka Plaatjie, quit the SABC three years ago after reinstating Motsoeneng as chief operating officer soon after the board had demoted him. Former SABC board colleagues described how he would behave illegally in his capacity as chairman, treating his job as executive rather than non-executive.
If Ngubane’s tenure at the SABC is anything to go by — stock up on candles, pronto.
In an ideal world you would neither know, nor care, who the chair of the national power utility was. They are supposed to be drab, grey and uncontroversial. In South Africa nowadays, those who rise to positions of prominence are household names — often for the wrong reasons.
Four months ago, Ngubane was regarded in the ANC as unsuitable for the job. Now he is the acting chairman. He may do a great job. His tenure at the Land Bank has been without public catastrophe.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s must be revelling in its decision last month to downgrade the utility to junk, its decision increasingly vindicated by the chaos at practically every level of the organisation. The CEO, Tshediso Matona, and three executives remain suspended and somehow the lights remain (mostly) on.
Perhaps, however, we do need a total grid meltdown before we take the situation at Eskom as seriously as it needs to be taken. It’s a horrific prospect and a socalled brown-out in which the power grid fails and takes days, if not weeks, to be restored would have significant social and political consequences.
CEOs of large companies have been upping their contingency planning for the unlikely event.
No one wants to be caught napping should the unthinkable occur — so supplies of diesel for generators at big banks and retailers have been extended to cover periods of up to two weeks.
At this stage, as London-based Nomura emerging markets economist Peter Attard Montalto points out, there is “not enough of a sense of crisis from either government or ordinary people”.
With load-shedding now part of everyday life like potholes and patchy water supply, everresilient South Africans are behaving very much like the frog placed in a pot of cool water on a stove with the heat turned up underneath it. By the time the frog realises the water has become too hot for it to survive, it is boiled alive.
Montalto, a regular commentator on South African issues, has been in the country this week to glean first-hand information about how we are coping with our mounting burden of economic problems.
What has stunned him is the high level of political interference apparent in the activity at Eskom. The place is functioning despite itself. The real concern at the very top of the organisation is the breakdown in proper governance.
The Eskom scenarios are too ghastly to contemplate.
So let’s end with an Easter joke: what’s the difference between Trevor Noah and Ben Ngubane? Trevor Noah has been (controversially) chosen on merit from a global pool of talent to front one of the world’s most respected satirical news shows. Ben Ngubane has been chosen from a goldfish bowl of recycled political cronies.
Nah! Forget it. It’s actually no laughing matter.
Whitfield is an award-winning financial writer and broadcaster
If Ngubane’s tenure at the SABC is anything to go by, stock up on candles, pronto