SA needs people with courage to stand up to corporate skulduggery

Former Eskom legal manager and company secretary Suzanne Daniels has shown the country how to stand up to corporate skulduggery: laugh in the faces of those who try to pervert behaviour, and assert the right to engage in good actions. Giving evidence at the commission into state capture, she detailed interactions with Gupta family members or acolytes intent on ensuring that certain Eskom executives were preferred over others in managing the parastatal.

In 2017, Daniels was allegedly offered an R800m bribe by Salim Essa, at that time adviser to public enterprises minister Lynne Brown, to orchestrate the return of suspended Eskom executive Matshela Koko as the parastatal’s CEO.

Daniels told Essa not to be ridiculous and burst out laughing, she related in evidence at the commission.

A month later, she was unexpectedly drawn into a discussion between Ajay Gupta, Duduzane Zuma and then deputy public enterprises minister Ben Martins about resolving a legal barrier to ensuring Brian Molefe’s reinstatement as Eskom CEO.

Molefe had been dismissed by Eskom and had taken his dispute with the power utility to court. It must have been clear to Daniels, when she walked into a meeting at a Johannesburg hotel with Essa and found the other three there, that her integrity would be weighed up.

Acknowledging her “total shock” at the meeting, she nonetheless asserted that regular case management processes would be followed in the matter, causing Gupta to be dismissive of her, and commenting that a back room deal would easily be brokered when then ANC presidential candidate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was elected.

Very few have the gumption to stand up for veracity and honour when others around them are prepared to act contrary to good ethics.

Most opt to do as little as possible, so as to avoid being pilloried, or losing a job with a good salary and luxury perks.

Daniels’ experience shows that those who dare stand firm pay a high price.

She was illegally suspended and then dismissed from Eskom, accused of distributing confidential information and being involved in illegal payments of R1bn to McKinsey and R564m to Trillian, and faced threats on her life.

She has acknowledged that she could have done much more to stave off state capture.

Our country needs more people with the courage to treat derisively those in the state and the private sectors who engage in corporate shenanigans.

Very few have the gumption to stand up for veracity and honour when others around them are prepared to act contrary to good ethics