JUSTICE MALALA | De Ruyter was an abysmal failure, but the ANC appointed him

Andre de Ruyter has been an utter failure in his job as CEO of Eskom.

Look at the trend that matters: whether the lights are on or not. In 2018 there were 14 days (141 hours) of blackouts in the year. In 2019 there were 30 days of load-shedding, according to load-shedding app EskomSePush. Things were getting very bad at Eskom.

De Ruyter started work on January 15 2020. That year, when there was virtually no industry due to the Covid-19 shutdowns, there were 54 days of blackouts. At a time of drastically reduced energy demand, De Ruyter’s Eskom could not provide SA with its product. But he was new, so let’s cut him some slack.

In 2021 the load-shedding got worse. SA clocked a whopping 1,153 hours or 75 days with blackouts. In 2022 things reached an absolute crisis point: 207 days with load-shedding. That means if you were running a business, such as a corner shop, your business was disrupted by Eskom failure two-thirds of the year. Two months into 2023, we have already had 57 days with blackouts. Put that differently: every day of this year has been characterised by some form of severe blackouts.

No matter how great a fan of De Ruyter’s you may be, you must acknowledge he was failing at the most basic aspect of his job: stabilising Eskom and ensuring it continued to power the country while a transition to reliable clean energy was being implemented. To understand how monumental this failure is, the Reserve Bank has reduced its economic growth forecast for 2023 to 0.3%, from 1.1% previously. Governor Lesetja Kganyago said power disruptions are the main cause of the downward revision. Eskom’s failure takes us closer to being a failed state.

Yet De Ruyter was not fired for this monumental failure over three years. He was shown the door because he said something we all know, and have known, to be true: the pigs are at the trough at Eskom and the corruption goes right to the top of the ANC. Eskom is losing R1bn a month due to graft and theft, he said. The next day he was told not to return to the office.

You cannot say De Ruyter was a failure without saying the same about the ANC and its ministers: they appointed him and supported him as he failed the country.

And that is where the problem lies, you see. The ANC is like the mafia: keep the omerta (criminal code of silence), smile and wave, take your payout, get a pat on the back. If you don’t follow the code of silence, however, you will be mauled.

After De Ruyter’s interview with eNCA last week, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the former Eskom CEO “shifts the goalposts by advertising his right-wing ideological posture”. Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele said De Ruyter portrayed a “right-wing” attitude. Pravin Gordhan, public enterprises minister, said De Ruyter had “swanned around the world looking at renewables” instead of fixing Eskom.

This hysterical response begs the question: why didn’t Gordhan have a word with the Eskom board about De Ruyter’s lack of attention to the job? Why didn’t Gungubele, possibly the most powerful minister in cabinet, say a word in 2020, 2021 or last year, as power supply worsened?

I’ll tell you why. De Ruyter and his predecessors at executive and board level are the ANC’s fault. You cannot say De Ruyter was a failure without saying the same about the ANC and its ministers: they appointed him and supported him as he failed the country. Back in 2019 Eskom was casting about for a CEO. Several names were touted for the top job, among them former Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga and the entity’s former group head of capital Dan Marokane.

The Eskom board, supervised by Gordhan, appointed De Ruyter instead. Before that, the same ANC had put Eskom in the hands of boards of directors headed by scandal-plagued stars of the Zondo commission such as Zola Tsotsi and Ben Ngubane.

When De Ruyter was appointed, the ANC’s Pule Mabe commended the Eskom board and government for applying “rigour” in selecting De Ruyter for the “onerous role”. I guess the ANC, despite this “rigour” in selecting De Ruyter, did not mind that the man was what they now claim to be a right-winger.

Eskom was a mess before De Ruyter arrived. The ANC oversaw it and had been making huge mistakes about the entity’s direction since 1998. De Ruyter is out the door now. We are still sitting in the dark — and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, no-one will be prosecuted for the R1bn monthly corruption at Eskom. The ANC will still win. As Gordhan once said, connect the dots. You will see where the real problem lies here.