EVEN THE NUM WANTS MPs TO PROBE ESKOM

The ANC has rejected a DA-sponsored inquiry into graft at Eskom but its union ally wants it to submit its own motion for a probe — before it’s too late

Denial has never been a good look on the ANC, and it has backfired spectacularly in the past. Think back to 2011 when Fikile Mbalula shed tears as he told the party’s national executive committee that he had learnt about his promotion to minister of sport from the Guptas, not from then president Jacob Zuma. It was the first overt sign of the scale of the family’s penetration into the state, but the ANC just shrugged.

When a chartered jet ferrying Gupta wedding guests landed at Waterkloof Air Force Base, a national key point, the blame was shifted elsewhere and again the party refused to admit there was a problem.

When former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas went public with the Guptas’ offer of R600m for him to take up the post of finance minister in 2016, the ANC launched a flimsy internal inquiry run by then secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, which went nowhere.

In the latest example of its see-noevil approach, the party voted against a DA motion to launch a parliamentary inquiry into the rot at Eskom. The

DA filed the motion after the explosive eNCA interview in which former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter alleged that corruption at the utility reached to cabinet level.

But De Ruyter is not the only one with inside knowledge of corruption at Eskom — the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a key affiliate of ANC ally Cosatu, has long been ringing the alarm bells. Last month, the FM reported on a meeting the NUM leadership held with public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan at the end of January, when it told him that load-shedding is a direct consequence of corruption.

The NUM laid out the full story, admitting that some of its own members were involved. It said 70%-80% of Eskom employees were in some way involved in corruption.

The union was dismayed, then, when newly appointed minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa began his visits to Eskom’s big six power plants and, after visiting just one station, confidently announced that corruption had nothing to do with load-shedding and the problems were simply technical.

The FM caught up with NUM Highveld chair Bizzah Motubatse, who respectfully disagrees with the minister.

“The coal cartels, truck drivers, small mines who are milking contracts are all involved in corruption on a large scale, but go look at the plants, look at how parts are bought. I know of one buyer who purchased a R72,000 pump for over R700,000, and that’s just one single example, and it was a substandard pump too,” he says.

“Go to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation & Arbitration, go and check how many Eskom employees are challenging action against them taken by Eskom because they were implicated in corruption.

“We are not playing about this, it is bad.”

Motubatse, who, despite heading a key branch of the biggest union at Eskom, has yet to hold a formal meeting with Ramokgopa, advised the minister not to be misled by managers who are potentially involved in corruption themselves.

“He must ask to see for himself, he must examine things closely. He is being misled.”

Ramokgopa is set to meet Cosatu leaders in Joburg next week, a source of some frustration for the NUM, which believes it would make more sense for the minister to interact with workers and union members at the Eskom coalface.

Motubatse believes, along with the DA, that there should be a parliamentary inquiry into Eskom only not at the behest of the opposition party, but as an ANC initiative.

“No, the ANC cannot be dictated to by the DA. Of course there are political dynamics there, but there is nothing stopping the ANC from bringing a motion itself,” he says.

In fact, the union will be writing to Mbalula now secretary-general to urge him to instruct the party’s parliamentary caucus to bring such a motion.

“The ANC must lead; if it does not, in 10 years’ time there will be nothing left of Eskom. The rot has to be arrested once and for all. It’s urgent,” he says. Only half in jest, he says the situation is so desperate that even the FBI should be brought in, “because the police and the Hawks are doing nothing”.

A key labour ally which had President Cyril

Ramaphosa himself as its inaugural leader in the 1980s is presenting the ANC with a golden opportunity to initiate a parliamentary inquiry on its own terms.

Will it bury its head in the sand once again, only to reap the full weight of its inaction years down the line? Recent history shows this is the most likely outcome, and it will once again have only itself to blame for the consequences just a year before its toughest election yet.