How affirmative action, BEE hurt Eskom: report

The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has released a report titled “The rise and fall of Eskom – and how to fix it now”, which states that affirmative action severely damaged the power utility.

The report says that in 1994, when the ANC took power, there were unfortunate changes at Eskom.

The changes included race-based affirmative action, political interference, and political appointments.

Highly skilled and experienced white engineers, managers, and technicians were given generous ‘packages’ to get out and make way for persons of the correct skin colour and political affiliation.

“The new managers at Eskom, mainly political appointments, seemed to have little interest in ensuring future electricity supply,” the report states.

“Instead, they were preoccupied with other goals, such as racial transformation and keeping the price of electricity artificially low for social purposes.”

Accountants replaced engineers at senior levels, and those accountants lost sight of Eskom’s fundamental purpose – to provide electricity and cover its costs, not make a big profit.

“Eskom became blighted with a damaging combination of ANC ideology and business school fashion.”

Coal supply problems

The report adds that South Africa’s electricity generation shortage was also due to Eskom’s incompetence.

In January 2008, during a period of heavy rain, a large number of the big coal stations failed – plunging much of the country into blackouts.

The reason was a “disastrous decision by Eskom to shift some of its coal supply away from its established contracts with big coal mines and instead start buying coal from a variety of small, black-owned mines”.

As a result, Eskom started receiving poor coal of varying quality. This problem was compounded by an “idiotic decision by Eskom accountants to reduce coal stockpiles at power stations so as to save on stock costs”.

When persistent rain fell on low, messy stockpiles of bad coal it turned them to sludge, which clogged up the mills, chutes, and nozzles feeding pulverised coal to the boilers.

The way forward for Eskom

According to the report the best way forward is for Eskom to be depoliticised.

“It should resume its old function: to provide sufficient, reliable electricity and to cover its costs. Nothing else,” the report said.

“It should be forbidden from pursuing political, social, or racial ambitions. It must appoint its engineers and other technical staff entirely on merit.”

MyBroadband asked the ANC for comment on the report, but there was no response by the time of publication.

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