Cleaning up Zuma’s mess is just the start for Cyril

In a bizarre kind of way, some of South Africa’s festive cheer comes from events that would normally be deemed to be negative.

A number of former Eskom executives were rounded up and appeared in court over corruption related to the Kusile power station. The news came close after the state power utility completed its most recent bout of power blackouts that reached levels never before seen in this country.

The arrest of these former executives is the perfect way to sum up South Africa’s past decade.

It brings into sharp focus the horrible results of the so-called “nine wasted years” of the Jacob Zuma administration but also gives the reassurance that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s much-vaunted “new dawn” is still showing glimpses of hope.

The new dawn – or whatever the next phase of SA’s rehabilitation is called – will need a major boost in direction from the man at the helm in the Union Buildings. The most common misconception regarding what needs to be done to get SA back on track is that the president simply needs to clean up Zuma’s mess and all will be well.

Far from it.

As is the case with the four executives who were arrested this past week, their alleged deeds took place during the Zuma years but the atmosphere that created an environment which allowed them to loot at will was created years before Zuma came into office.

It’s now common knowledge that as far back as 1998, government was warned by Eskom and the department of minerals and energy that they needed to provide funds to build capacity into the power utility.

In 2006 when the first major power blackout happened, then president Thabo Mbeki reassured the country that “there is no electricity crisis”. A year later, load shedding was introduced.

The point is, we need leadership that will not only celebrate its success based on cleaning up Zuma’s mess, but leadership that will map out South Africa’s next decade. The shortsightedness that made Mbeki’s government ignore warnings on Eskom created a permanent crisis.

This crisis meant that any projects undertaken by Eskom to create more capacity always carried room for those with ulterior motives to commit fraud and corruption running into hundreds of millions of rands. The four Eskom executives arrested over Kusile are real evidence that the president’s “watch this space” warning on corruption was not just empty talk.

In fact, if recent reports are anything to go by, the kingpins of the state capture period should soon be wearing orange overalls. That we must applaud the president’s foresight in appointing Shamila Batohi to head the National Prosecuting Authority is obvious.

But we mustn’t let shortsightedness cheat South Africa’s future generations of growth and stability because we did not call on our current leadership to look past their immediate successes. To pep up, South Africa for the next decade will require doing more than just the obvious.

A decade from now, the country’s festive cheer must come from the results of exceptional leadership from the current administration.

Sydney Majoko.

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