EFF calls on suspension of Eskom CEO following his irregular appointment of senior executives and general incompetence
13 April 2021
The EFF call for immediate suspension of the generally incompetent Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter. Recent reports indicate that Mr. de Ruyter has made three senior appointments at Eskom without following due process. This adds to a plethora of irregularities amidst general incapacity to actually steer the company to a productive and efficient direction. There is no guarantee that his repeated flagrant disregard for due processes, with the protection of the Board and Minister, will not also lead to interference and weakening of the investigation into his racist conduct within Eskom.
The former department of Public Enterprises Chief Specialist, Ben Theron, together with Mandy Rambharos and Michael Reimers were all appointed as senior executives at Eskom without the positions ever getting advertised, and with no provisions made for these positions in the Eskom organogram. Eskom has taken no steps to make Mr. de Ruyter accountable for these decisions, and we have every reason to believe that these irregular appointments were made with the blessings of the minister of Public Enterprises, Jamnandas Gordhan.
The appointment of Ben Theron for instance, who comes from Gordhan's department, can only be as a result of Gordhan's own insistence if not strong recommendation.
These irregularities were reported to the Board, and even though the Board initially wanted that these must be investigated by the team led by Advocate Ishmael Semenya that will be investigating allegations of racism against de Ruyter, a decision was later taken to remove the appointment of these people from the investigation. This lays credence to the suspicion out there, that even the investigation that Eskom is purporting to conduct on de Ruyter's racism is just a box-ticking exercise, the outcome of which has already been determined. When all is said and done, nothing will happen
to de Ruyter. Eskom is now firmly in the hands of a white clique, led by de Ruyter and Jan Oberlhozer, surrounded by like-minded whites whose mandate is to weaken the role of the State at Eskom, undermine the State's transformational ideals, and purge any progressive minded black executives at that entity.
To understand the power and protection that de Ruyter enjoys, you need to look no further than the decision of parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts to stop its investigations into allegations of racism against the Eskom CEO. This happened after Minister Gordhan intervened and asked that Eskom be given an opportunity to do its own investigations, despite the fact that they knew about these allegations for a year, and did nothing.
We call on Eskom to include the irregular appointments of the above-named senior managers to be included in the terms of reference for the investigation that will be done by Advocate Ishmael Semenya. These irregular acts by de Ruyter cannot simply be wished away. While we have no doubt about the integrity of Advocate Semenya, we wish to warn him not to allow Eskom and Pravin Gorhan to bully him into exonerating de Ruyter. His investigation must be free of any undue interference, and must ultimately lead to exposing all the shenanigans de Ruyter has been busy with ever since he joined Eskom.
However, in the interest of the investigation de Ruyter must be suspended to keep him away from influencing the direction or manipulating witnesses.
Issued by Vuyani Pambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 13 April 2021
