Koko must get his day in court

South Africans can be forgiven for thinking that magistrate Stanley Jacobs had acquitted former Eskom chief executive Matshela Koko and company, instead of simply striking the case off the roll this past week.

Koko immediately went on the offensive against all who had brought so much suffering to him and his family, even going as far as saying “saying I don’t like President Cyril Ramaphosa doesn’t fully explain how I feel about him” in an interview.

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The truth of the matter is the magistrate simply said to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA): “You are not ready to prosecute this case because there are crucial documents that you still need to make a case of this.”

Nowhere did the magistrate pronounce on Koko’s guilt or innocence. In fact, maybe it is the best thing that may have happened for the NPA, following another embarrassment in the Nulane state-capture related case.

If advocate Shamila Batohi and company do not use this opportunity to regroup and focus on doing the basics right, then maybe Koko and company must just be left alone to enjoy the millions that the country might never know if they were proceeds of crime or not.

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What Koko forgets, though, is that however much he sings about having been CEO of Eskom during the period where there was no load shedding and that he was unfairly treated by Ramaphosa, he was CEO when dodgy deals were done with the Gupta-linked Trillian and Swiss Technology company ABB.

It is a matter of public record that ABB paid Eskom R1.5 billion, following its admission that it paid an Eskom official bribes between 2014 and 2017 to have decisions go their way at the power utility.

Not interpreted as guilt

Koko was in charge of Eskom in 2016. In his public drive to have South Africans sympathise with his family in their pain and suffering, he forgets to tell the country that in 2018, he left Eskom in the middle of a hearing.

He resigned and stressed that his resignation must not be interpreted as guilt. Koko resigned without the hearing ever clearing him or declaring him guilty.

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Surely that workplace hearing should have been one of the platforms that he should have used to clear his name. But he chose to walk.

The oft-repeated assertion that he led the utility through a period of no load shedding and no burning of diesel to keep the lights on is what he uses to build this case of a victimised target of the state.

What he does not say is that investigations have shown that the debilitating and economically catastrophic bouts of load shedding that hit the country following his departure from Eskom in 2018 were because of his management style that incentivised underreporting of breakdowns.

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He infamously introduced a system of rewarding power station managers who kept power stations running, even when they were due for planned maintenance.

And those who took plants down for maintenance or even due to unplanned breakdowns could be punished by unpaid suspension.

SA in a poor state

The result: poor maintenance that left generating units in a poor state. And the country is where it is today, and Koko is claiming easy victories, but history doesn’t forget, unlike people. Batohi and her staff owe Koko his day in court.

Even if it is the last thing the NPA does, it must afford this engineer his opportunity to clear his name in a legal case, as well afford themselves a chance to prove that he made deals to benefit his stepdaughters, while he was CEO.