Pravin calls on Eskom board to be axed or resign

FORMER finance minister Pravin Gordhan yesterday called for the Eskom board to be fired and a full investigation into not only Brian Molefe’s return to the power utility, but his actions in his previous job at Transnet.

Gordhan told Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises, of which he is now a member, that the public would not be fooled by unfeasible explanations on the circumstances around Molefe’s shock reappointment as Eskom’s chief executive.

“The answers lack credibility, both in the public domain and from what I am hearing here. I don’t know whether the board lives in its own bubble of oblivion, but the public is connecting the dots… If we think we are bluffing the public, we have another think coming,” Gordhan said.

He added that “Eskom is far too important an entity to become the personal toy of a few individuals. Either the board in its entirety should be dismissed or should voluntarily resign”.

His remarks came after Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown appeared before the committee to discuss both Molefe’s return to Eskom and the circumstances surrounding his departure. Brown announced that she would not oppose the opposition’s court application for his appointment to be set aside.

She said she recently learnt that Molefe had not resigned from Eskom last year, but had asked for early retirement, hence the board’s proposal to pay him R30 million in a pension settlement.

Gordhan asked Brown why she did not go to court to challenge the package, rather than agree that he could return to the helm of the company. Brown responded that perhaps she should have asked Eskom to go to court to oppose Molefe’s pension demand.

But Ben Ngubane, the chairman of the board, said top lawyers had advised the board it would have lost the case. He further rejected Gordhan’s suggestion that the board should quit. “Please, the board has worked very hard. South Africa must at least acknowledge that.”

Like opposition MPs had done earlier in the briefing, Gordhan asked the board whether a political instruction had been issued to allow Molefe to trade his seat as an MP for that of Eskom’s chief executive.

“Who instructed you to rehire Mr Molefe, who made a phone call to whom?”

Brown retorted that she had not been ordered by President Jacob Zuma to reinstate Molefe.

POWER UTILITY FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO BECOME THE PERSONAL TOY OF A FEW INDIVIDUALS