DA heads to court to set aside Molefe’s reinstatement as Eskom CEO

The Democratic Alliance has decided to go to court to set aside the reinstatement of Brian Molefe as Eskom CEO.

Following a briefing by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, DA MP Natasha Mazzone said the executive’s assertion that Molefe’s reinstatement was the “only option” for financial reasons was “disingenuous and simply not true”.

“In view of the spurious reasons given and the complete irrationality of the decision, we will once again be approaching the courts, this time to set aside Brian Molefe’s ‘redeployment’ by the ANC government to Eskom.”

The DA believed Molefe had never been entitled to the R30 million pension payout in the first place for two reasons.

One, because he did not qualify for early retirement as he was under the age of 55 and; two, he had only worked at Eskom for 21 months, accruing an estimated maximum retirement benefit of only R2.5 million.

“Moreover, our rough calculations, having looked at the Eskom pension and provident fund rules, are that, on the basis of a R6.9 million annual salary, Molefe would only have accrued a maximum retirement benefit of R2.5 million on resignation from Eskom.

“Brown therefore today clearly used the R30 million figure as a smokescreen to justify the unjustifiable return of Molefe to the CEO position.”

She added that it was indeed “highly suspicious” that having failed to become the minister of finance, which seemed to have been President Jacob Zuma’s clear intention in earlier deploying Molefe to parliament, Brown had paved a smooth return for him to Eskom.

“Indeed, Molefe was clearly of no use to Zuma and the Gupta family in the back benches of parliament,” Mazzone said.

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