Cyanide, corruption and the fight to clean up South Africa
Andre de Ruyter had been drinking his morning coffee hours after resigning as chief executive of South Africa’s troubled national power generator, when he suddenly began to feel violently ill.
The normally healthy 6ft 4in businessman was soon dizzy, and shaking uncontrollably. “I was unstable and confused,” Mr de Ruyter told The Sunday Telegraph. “I was not walking properly and gasping for air.”
Bodyguards rushed him out of Eskom’s Johannesburg headquarters last month, to a nearby clinic for emergency treatment and tests.
The results of those tests have shocked South Africa and highlighted its struggle with ruthless and frequently murderous corruption.
Doctors told the 54-year-old his blood showed high levels of cyanide in what he believes was an attempted assassination because of his efforts to clean up Africa’s biggest corporation after years of systematic looting.
The alleged hit might appear more reminiscent of 1990s Russia, but South Africa endures dozens of assassinations annually – affecting politics, business and even universities. Days after
Mr de Ruyter went public, an apparent assassination attempt struck the vice chancellor of a major university, who had also tried to root out corruption.
Such violence has become commonplace, according to Julian Rademeyer, director of the Organised Crime Observatory for East and Southern Africa, at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. The country saw 143 assassinations in 2022, including more than 40 in the world of politics.
In his first major interview since the incident, Mr de Ruyter said he had underestimated Eskom’s problem with crime and corruption when he took on the top job. While there he discovered plots to sabotage power stations and rampant theft by criminal gangs.
“I lost a lot of my rosy-tinted outlook on humanity,” he said.
As recently as 20 years ago, stateowned Eskom was judged one of the world’s best power generators. Now South Africa faces its worst ever power cuts, with homes and business losing around nine hours of electricity each day in rolling blackouts.
The outages mean children cannot do homework and traffic lights do not work in densely populated cities.
Factories have shut down, along with some mines, and shops are unable to do business without costly generators. Cellphone and internet suppliers are increasingly affected by the outages, which are estimated to be costing the economy 4bn rand (£200 million) a day.
Many fear the lights will go off permanently. Years of underinvestment and corruption have left power stations plagued by breakdowns. At present there are faults at 11 out 14 coal-fired power stations and the only nuclear station in Cape Town will soon close for repairs. Blackouts are at their highest level yet – stage six of a possible eight.
Mr de Ruyter was appointed three years ago to turn around the mess, becoming one of a tiny number of whites in a top public-sector job. He was widely respected and took a pay cut because he said he was a “patriot”, but his selection was also criticised by some black business and political organisations, because he was white.
Now he admits that he also “underestimated the extent to which Eskom was in the grip of crime and corruption”. He recalls when his team began discussing the growing problems of breakdowns at the power stations: “We said this is very odd. Why is this happening? Why are so many tripping at the same time?
“Then in November 2021 I was approached by a credible source who said that there was going to be an attempt to force stage six load shedding by breaking the [power] plants. I already knew there was a lot of corruption at Eskom, but this was active sabotage [by Eskom employees] …which I found unbelievable.”
There were also criminal syndicates stealing top quality coal and replacing it with lower grades. Others were taking out chunks of coal and replacing it with rocks. Some destroyed equipment on power plants, so their contacts could get orders for spare parts.
Mr de Ruyter informed whoever he could – the police, the state security agency. But there was no response. “Ironically, they were missing in action,” he recalls.
The electricity crisis has been growing for more than a decade but the ruling African National Congress government has done little to fix it.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government was told two years ago that the country urgently needed another 4 to 6 GW of power. Eskom is not allowed to build new capacity without the consent of energy minister Gwede Mantashe.
He was finally persuaded to lift all restrictions on supply of power by the private sector and some plans for renewables and investment are in place. But permission came too late.
“It takes 18-24 months to build a new wind/solar plant. We could have, should have, added the 4-6 Gigawatts by now,” Mr de Ruyter said.
His Eskom team tried to put together a renewable energy plan with international approval and pledges of support to present at the Cop26 climate summit in 2021, but were not allowed at the table.
When he began talking about sabotage, he received death threats and even found a tracking device in his car. He was given bodyguards.
But his will to keep fighting was finally broken late last year when Mr Mantashe turned on him and publicly accused him of “actively agitating for the overthrow of the state”.
A new Eskom board was unveiled around the same time which largely ignored Mr de Ruyter’s plans to improve management and isolate sabotage at so many of the plants.
He handed in his resignation in December. Just hours later, and before news of his resignation went public, he was allegedly poisoned with cyanide.
“I was very sick for two days,” said Mr de Ruyter, who is not due to leave his post until the end of March. He has laid a case for attempted murder and police have said they will investigate.
Yet when Mr Ramaphosa was asked why Mr de Ruyter had resigned, he simply replied: “Eskom is a tough job.”
The apparent assassination attempt is one of many in South Africa.
Only last week, a security guard assigned to protect Prof Sakhela Buhlungu, vice chancellor of the University of Fort Hare was shot dead, in what was seen as an attempt to kill his boss who had been probing corruption.
Other academics have been assassinated in the past few years. Mr Rademeyer said: “There are professional hit men out there. South Africa’s ability to prosecute murders has dropped significantly, only 19 of 100 murders are solved.”
‘I already knew there was a lot of corruption at Eskom but this was active sabotage’