NUM calls for Eskom board to be disbanded and welcomes Jabu Mabuza’s resignation
11 January 2020
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) reiterates its call to have the entire Eskom Board disbanded and immediately be replaced by competent men and women who will place the interests of the country and its people before anything else.
This comes after former Eskom Board chairperson Jabu Mabuza and his board misled President Cyril Ramaphosa when they presented to him a false report last year December committing that there won't be any load shedding until mid-January 2020.
In December 2019 President Ramaphosa assured South Africans that Eskom will keep lights on until the middle of January but that promise never materialised as the country is currently facing a problem of load shedding since the start of Christmas holidays.
The NUM agrees with the Deputy President David Mabuza when he said the Eskom management and board misled President Cyril Ramaphosa about the halting of load shedding until the middle of January 2020.
The NUM welcomes the resignation of Jabu Mabuza as the Chairman of the board at Eskom. This is a decision that he should have long taken as he demonstrated his inability early in his tenure at Eskom.
We are hoping that more board members will voluntarily resign and that our government leaders will hold themselves accountable for the unwarranted interference and influence in the parastatal. If they fail to volunteer to resign we call on the president to disband the board. We also support the call by COSATU for the president to hold Pravin Gordhan responsible for the mess in the SOEs.
"We have said it on numerous occasions as the NUM that the current Eskom board was not assisting in resolving the country's power crisis. It is even worse that the former chairperson goes to an extreme of misleading the State President. This is a total disrespect and should be treated as treason. We are calling for immediate removal of the entire board," said NUM General Secretary David Sipunzi.
Eskom is too important of a parastatal towards the economic growth and development of our country to be managed through egos and silo approaches by those at the political and policy level.
The nation will soon see through the lies around what the real issues surrounding the Eskom failures are, and we hope that when that happens there will still be something left for the country.
The NUM has on numerous accounts stated that lack of objective political leadership and oversight is a driver behind the dismal performance of Eskom.
Several executives have had their integrity and competence questioned and at times destroyed to cover up political mismanagement.
Chickens will soon come home to roost and the spears will re-direct themselves to the political heads and will sooner haunt the ANC as the governing party on its proven inability to turn around several failing parastatals and covering up of political friends at the expense of the entire nation.
We are calling on those who are illegally connecting electricity, municipalities and government departments not paying their debt to Eskom to stop the illegal connections and pay for the electricity they are using.
It’s been far too long that Eskom workers have been taking the blame and heat for all the misfortunes in the company with no one outside taking any accountability and responsibility for their part.
Our observation is that none of the advices that we forwarded as few points to turn things around at Eskom to both Public Enterprise and Energy Department have not been considered. With this observation, we can confidently anticipate annual losses above R33 billion at the end of the financial year ending in March 2020 and this must not surprise anybody and we will soon get to a point where we won’t be able to service any of the company operations while few “powerful” individuals thrive and benefit from the chaos.
Issued by David Sipunzi, NUM General Secretary, 11 January 2020
