DA submits PAIA application for Zuma energy adviser’s R149m Eskom contract

The DA will today submit an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to gain access to tender documents which resulted in President Jacob Zuma’s energy adviser, Silas Zimu, receiving a R149 million contract from Eskom.

The DA is deeply concerned at media reports today that seven months after Silas Zimu’s appointment as Zuma’s adviser on energy, Cape Gate Marepha, a company at which he is a nonexecutive director, was awarded a contract to supply Eskom with wiring.

It is shocking that either Zimu, as a political adviser to the President, failed to declare his interests, or that President Zuma thought it acceptable to keep an advisor who simultaneously profits from public spending in the energy sector.

The DA will therefore also put in parliamentary questions to President Zuma on his knowledge of Zimu's business interests, specifically which interests were declared to the President and which were not.

The DA believes that Eskom must answer about Zimu’s direct conflict of interests and must do so by supplying the full documentary record of the tender decision. We will especially be interested to see to what extent Zimu's association with the President was documented.

Ultimately this is a further damning issue that Eskom must come clean on.  Recent scandals include Eskom CEO Matshela Koko and the alleged awarding of tenders worth R1 billion to Impulse International, a company of which his step-daughter is a Director.

The reputation of Eskom is under the most enormous cloud, causing investment uncertainty. Instead of growing jobs, SOEs like Eskom are frightening investment away.

Eskom is fast building on its reputation from national load-shedder, to national job-shedder.

Statement issued by Natasha Mazzone MP, DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises, 7 May 2017