Dames wanted to quit in February
Dames says he told board of intention months ago
ESKOM CEO Brian Dames said he wasn’t throwing in the towel early by announcing his resignation this week: he said he told his board as long ago as February that he wanted to quit.
It’s hard to blame Dames for wanting to leave, even if his departure at this precarious stage can’t be good for the rest of us.
Few people know as much as he does about keeping the lights on amid an increasingly fickle energy supply.
Just last month, it grew so nailbitingly tight that the big industrial users — such as Assore’s ferrochrome and BHP Billiton’s aluminium smelters — were made to shut down so the rest of the country could have power.
There was “never a right time or a wrong time to quit”, Dames said on Friday. He said he felt Eskom was now “stable” enough to undergo a change of guard.
He will leave in March after 26 years of working at the utility, but he still has no place to go.
“I just want to have a rest,” he said. The job “takes a lot out of
I just want to have a rest … I want to pay attention to my family
you. Really, it never ends. I normally say to people that I just want a life … I want to pay attention to my family. They have sacrificed a lot.”
Who can blame him? It certainly can’t have been pleasant being in his shoes for the past three years.
As head of Eskom, Dames has been the default target for people angry with the politicians who fluffed our power investment decisions more than a decade ago, and furious at the blackouts that ripple through the suburbs every few weeks.
Who else but Dames could be blamed for power tariff increases of more than 75% since 2010, as well as the sputtering supply and the damage to the economy because of epileptic power supply?
Politicians like Jeff Radebe and others who failed to invest years ago should carry the can, but people have short memories.
Nevertheless, Dames did a fine job of sticking to his mandate — he kept the lights on, the JSE open and Sandton, the heart of the economy, pumping.
But behind the scenes, the plug was pulled on power-hungry industries in “power buybacks”. Companies were paid to shut up shop, to free up capacity. But the alternative was unthinkable — there would have been an unholy outcry if power had been cut off in suburbia to ensure the mines and furnaces kept operating.
As well as taking flak from the public, Dames was also under pressure from government to deliver some of the biggest power stations in the world on time and within budget.
But almost since ground was broken, Medupi and its sister station, Kusile, have been a horrible embarrassment.
Not only have they been dogged by apparent rampant and brazen corruption, but the cost overruns at Medupi alone have edged above R77-billion. Originally earmarked to open by mid-2011, Medupi is now more than 30 months late.
Dames also had to manage the glaring conflict of interest when Hitachi won the R20-billion tender to supply the station’s boilers.
South Africans, jaded by a seemingly endless stream of dubious deals, were quick to note that Chancellor House, the ANC’s front company, owned 25% of Hitachi Power Africa. This meant the ruling party was both player and referee in the deal.
To compound the issue, the work done by Hitachi turned out to be substandard. Work was delayed while shoddy welding was improved, and costs and tempers flared as new hires were brought in from Thailand to get the job done properly.
As Dames pondered his resignation, Medupi faced yet another crisis when French contractor Alstom failed to get its software running effectively.
Eskom has now had to hire Siemens to work “in parallel” with it to get the job done.
Dames said this was a vital but small part of the project. “We’re not terminating our contract with Alstom. This is actually a small project relative to the rest of the work on the project,” he said.
Conspiracy theorists will make much of his departure now — fuelled probably by the fact that company bosses in South Africa often “resign” with no transparency over the real reasons for their departure.
Certainly, many will struggle to buy Dames’s story that he just wants to spend more time with his family. But in this case, his claims of resigning for “personal reasons” might be just that.
He rubbished suggestions that his departure might have been due to differences with his ultimate boss, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba.
“I’ve never had a difficult discussion with him; that’s absolutely true,” he said.
“I have witnessed the support that Eskom got [from him]. He works hard, he gives good guidance. I’ve got a lot of respect for him actually.”
But what is equally true is that his relationship with his political overlords must have been regularly tested over Medupi.
In April a frustrated Gigaba threatened that “heads would roll” if the power station wasn’t delivered by the new deadline.
It wasn’t delivered on time, and Gigaba had to retract his threat, but a legion of armchair theorists will now say Dames’ resignation is evidence that heads did roll.
Either way, the departure of a veteran Eskom technocrat leaves the company and South Africa poorer.