New Eskom boss ‘lacks relevant experience’ to salvage the utility

Incoming Eskom chief executive officer (CEO) Andre de Ruyter could fail to turn the power utility and its R454 billion debt he inherited around as he lacked the relevant energy experience, which could demoralise employees.

These were sentiments shared by former Eskom CEO Matshela Koko, energy expert Ted Blom and analyst Yamkela Spengane at a seminar on the Eskom crisis hosted in Pretoria yesterday.

Cabinet had mandated Minister of Public Enterprise Pravin Gordhan to negotiate with De Ruyter to start his duties as soon as possible, instead of January 15. De Ruyter is currently heading packaging company Nampak.

But De Ruyter was more qualified in “manufacturing paper” than running an engineering power company, Spengane said.

“When you look at many power utilities in the world, you realise they are led by people who were not only engineers, but who went through the ranks in those power utilities,” he said.

“We took (former Eskom CEO) Phakamani (Hadebe) from Land Bank. He’s never worked inside a power station his entire life. Now they’re fetching someone who is busy manufacturing paper from Nampak and said he must fix something he has no organisational history of. It’s going to be a crisis.”

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Koko believed the power utility’s employees would be reluctant to “go to war” with De Ruyter as they saw no future in the entity.

He alluded to Hadebe’s protested announcement of a zero percent wage increase last year, which affected staff at the power utility.

Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu announced earlier this week that Deputy President David Mabuza would convene a resuscitated energy war room to tackle load shedding.

But this was only to aid political interference, Blom said. He estimates that the power utility cost the country’s economy over R1 trillion since it became a state-owned enterprise in 2001.

But the previous war room established in 2015 to tackle the energy crisis fizzled out without bearing fruit, similarly to the Eskom sustainability task team that was set up by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year, Spengane said.

Koko disagreed with Gordhan’s statement earlier this month when the minister said Eskom’s issues were manageable. According to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the country required an additional 5,000MW on the power grid.

“That is a crisis of the biggest proportion. This is where I disagree with Minister Gordhan when he says there is a crisis that we can manage. It is not manageable.”

– rorisangk@citizen.co.za

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