Eskom’s Mark Lamberti quits
Threatened actions and ‘vitriolic defamation’ of his person led to decision to leave the board
AFTER relentless pressure from political parties and other groups, Eskom board member Mark Lamberti quit yesterday.
Lamberti, the chief executive of Imperial, had been in the job for four months when allegations of racism and sexism emerged and last month a High Court decision dealt a blow to his stay on the board.
His resignation came a day after he wrote to Imperial staff denying he intended harm when he referred to former employee and accountant Adil Chowan as a “female employment equity” candidate.
He joined the board in January following sweeping changes at Eskom.
In a letter to Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom board chairperson Jabu Mabuza Lamberti told Eskom bosses he wanted to stay off the board. There had been calls for Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire him.
“The background to the High Court judgment handed down on March 23 was expounded on fully in my letter of April 2 to the Eskom chairperson. It is essential to emphasise that while mistakes were made and there are important lessons to be learnt there were no findings in the judgment of racism or discrimination against AHM, Imperial or myself,” he wrote in the letter.
“Despite this there has been a mainstream and social media frenzy of generally inaccurate commentary. This is being fuelled by a political agenda and legally incorrect interpretations of the judgment, which have culminated inter alia in the most vitriolic defamation of my person. The most telling aspect of this is the call for the minister and indeed the president to remove me from the Eskom board,” said Lamberti.
“These developments and the threatened retaliatory actions have reached a point where they may impinge on the tentative but essential progress of Eskom. My fiduciary duty to the company forces me to prevent this insofar as I can by resigning,” he said.
The High Court found in March that Chowan had every right to believe she was discriminated against. She was fired in September 2015 after being found guilty of misconduct charges.
EFF leader Julius Malema had also wanted Ramaphosa to remove another board member, Sifiso Dabengwa, because he was close to the president.
Ramaphosa admitted in Parliament last month that he knew Dabengwa but was not a business associate of the former MTN boss as alleged by Malema.