LETTER | Dear De Ruyter, we don't need your apologies

Andre de Ruyter has been at the helm long enough to understand the threats and to counter the risk

05 July 2022 - 08:01 By Sihle Ngcobo
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Eskom Group CEO Andre' de Ruyter
Eskom Group CEO Andre' de Ruyter
Image: Freddy Mavunda

When learners do not pass a subject, the teacher has failed. When patients die in hospitals, doctors take the fall. The blame doesn't go to who or what caused the failure but to whoever is tasked with preventing it.

The ANC's cadre deployment policy and governance of the SOEs may have been the cause and catalyst of Eskom's non-fulfilment of its core function, which is the provision of electricity, but it is Eskom itself and its management that must take the blame.

Any business, project or undertaking is always facing risk and threats, whether internal or external, and it is the function of the leadership to always calculate, manage and minimise the risk. It is not the function of Eskom's management to call press conferences to tell us what we already know and to pass the blame to the culprits we already know.

The Eskom Se Push app is reporting that we have had more than 850 hours of continuous load-shedding, this year alone. That is 850 hours of pause for SA, including hospital machines, examinations and infant formula bottles.

Andre de Ryter has been at the helm long enough to understand the threats and to counter the risk, he should not be famous for his apologies.

Sihle Ngcobo

Mnamatha, Botha's Hill

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