The piper must play the paymaster’s tune
Zondo hears testimony of how former top executives fed information to Gupta runner Salim Essa
This week’s testimony of Eskom chair Jabu Mabuza and other witnesses before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture helped confirm much of the #Guptaleaks disclosures.
In addition, it revealed even more astonishing information about the shenanigans of those entrusted with running (down) Eskom.
Mabuza told deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo that then chair Ben Ngubane, former CFO Anoj Singh, former generation boss Matshela Koko and former company secretary and legal head Suzanne
Daniels had leaked confidential and sensitive information to Gupta runner Salim Essa, the majority investor in Trillian Capital, and Regiments Capital CEO Eric Wood and his colleagues Mohammed Bobat and Faheema Badat.
Of course, all of this now makes sense. Another former Eskom chair, Zola Tsotsi, told parliament last year that it was Essa who decided who would occupy which board committee in 2014, and instructed him and former public enterprises minister Lynne Brown to that effect.
It also fits together that a few months later, having also helped reshuffle the executive management at Megawatt Park, Essa was drafting board resolutions for the benefit of the Gupta family and his own company.
The board and management could only gracefully accept his continued assistance and rubber-stamp his evil-genius intervention.
What kind of paymaster would he have been if he did not call the tune?