De Ruyter told Gordhan about two ministers involved in Eskom corruption — Report

Former Eskom CEO André De Ruyter informed public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan about the suspected involvement of two cabinet members in a crime that has crippled the utility.

That is according to the Sunday newspaper Rapport, which cited two sources familiar with a private investigation into the Mpumalanga coal cartels.

In an interview on E-tv’s My Guest Tonight with Annika Larsen, De Ruyter said he told an unnamed minister that a high-level ANC politician was complicit in the cartel activities.

“The minister looked at a senior official and said, ‘I guess that it was inevitable that it would come out anyway’, which suggests that this wasn’t news,” De Ruyter said.

The criminal gangs are known for stealing high-quality coal from Eskom and swopping it with low-quality coal, coal byproducts, and rocks that damage the utility’s power stations.

Due to alleged links between the Mpumalanga police and the coal cartels, specialist police units from other provinces had to be roped in to try and crack down on the crime.

While Eskom and these units have had some success in curbing the crimes, a plan is also in the pipeline to appoint a former police general that was ousted during the period of state capture to lead a high-level Saps investigation into the cartels.

Although De Ruyter only mentioned one high-level politician, Rapport said there were actually two cabinet ministers under investigation in the private probe, which Eskom had initiated due to a lack of support from law enforcement agencies.

Rapport asked Gordhan about the claim that he was the minister to whom De Ruyter confided the information.

The minister said he detested corruption in all forms and that the Eskom board had to investigate De Ruyter’s allegations.

He neither confirmed nor denied that De Ruyter had raised the allegations with him.

Gordhan had largely supported De Ruyter in the public domain until recently.

Following De Ruyter’s resignation in December 2022, Gordhan praised De Ruyter for acting against corruption and thanked him for his “sacrifice and resilience”.

He also defended De Ruyter and his executive team from energy minister Gwede Mantashe’s seemingly baseless accusation of treason, although only after being directly asked about it in a media briefing.

However, since the interview with explosive allegations against the ANC aired, the public enterprises minister has quickly changed his tune.

On Wednesday, Gordhan berated De Ruyter for “meddling” in politics instead of focusing on ending load-shedding.

Gordan said the Eskom CEO should not be involved in open political debates or assertions.

“Where they have political views, that is their private business, and they are welcome to express those views privately,” he said.

Gordhan also disputed De Ruyter’s assertion that nothing was being done to fight the crimes affecting Eskom.

“Lots of people have been reported to the law enforcement authorities for alleged involvement in acts of corruption or fraud,” the minister said.

Following De Ruyter’s early booting out, Gordhan also told Bloomberg that De Ruyter had effectively called everyone in government “idiots”, which stirred the backlash against the CEO.

“He did not pay the attention to Eskom’s generation that he should have, and instead swanned around the world looking at renewables,” Gordhan said.

The minister added that De Ruyter did not prioritise correctly because he failed to “sweat Eskom’s assets as he should have”.

“The main focus by government will now be to do just that,” Gordhan stated.

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