{"id":508614,"date":"2023-09-20T08:32:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T06:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=508614"},"modified":"2023-09-20T09:16:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T07:16:42","slug":"back-to-square-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/508614-back-to-square-one.html","title":{"rendered":"Back to square one"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has rejected the Eskom board\u2019s recommendations for a new CEO, sending the nine-month process back to square one.<\/p>\n

News24 reports<\/a><\/strong> that there were four front-runners for the job, three of which were submitted to the Ministry of Public Enterprises for deliberation.<\/p>\n

Three of the four short-listed candidates\u2019 names were already known<\/strong><\/a>: former Eskom manager and chemical engineer Dan Marokane, NRS Association chair Vally Padayachee, and former Eskom Rotek Industries director Ayanda Noah.<\/p>\n

News24 reports that the fourth candidate was former Eskom CFO Paul O\u2019Flaherty.<\/p>\n

Gordhan\u2019s spokesperson Ellis Mnyandu said in a statement that the recruitment for a new Eskom CEO would be finalised soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recruitment process for appointing the GCEO of Eskom must be transparent, run with integrity, and be beyond reproach. A rigorous vetting process of the candidates is required,\u201d Mnyandu said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a requirement that the shareholder cannot deviate from. To that end, the process must be subjected to enhanced due diligence so that all necessary considerations are considered in making the appointment. The process will be concluded soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eskom board chairman Mpho Makwana told journalists in August<\/strong><\/a> that the appointment of a new CEO was subjected to \u201cenhanced due diligence\u201d and was in the hands of Gordhan\u2019s department.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are, from time to time, receiving questions as part of the enhanced due diligence the shareholder and board have had to do,\u201d Makwana said.<\/p>\n

Extra care was being taken \u201cgiven the significance of this appointment at this point and, I guess, the painful lessons we learnt from our past,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [memorandum of incorporation] of Eskom requires that once the board is done with the selection process, they have to obtain the shareholder\u2019s concurrence,\u201d Makwana stated.<\/p>\n

Eskom\u2019s shareholder is the South African government, with the Department of Public Enterprises and Gordhan acting as custodians.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

President Cyril Ramaphosa, accompanied by Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe and Mining Indaba Advisory Board Chairperson Mpho Makwana, arrives at the Cape Town International Convention Centre to deliver the keynote at the 25th annual Investing in Africa Mining Indaba. February 2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOur shareholder have their own processes they have to go through with their own colleagues and principles,\u201d stated Makwana.<\/p>\n

Makwana said he imagines nobody wants a new CEO appointed only to have questions raised about the due diligence done.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe SOC [state-owned company] environment is highly contested,\u201d Makwana said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger the SOC, the greater the contestation. The bigger the SOC, the bigger the challenges of toxicity and all manner of people who want to influence who gets appointed to this position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eskom has had no permanent CEO since Andr\u00e9 de Ruyter\u2019s early departure<\/strong><\/a> in February 2023.<\/p>\n

De Ruyter\u2019s resignation<\/strong><\/a> was announced in December, and his last day at the company would have been 31 March 2023.<\/p>\n

Makwana\u2019s statement about \u201cpainful lessons\u201d refers to De Ruyter\u2019s whirlwind exit for the state-owned power utility, which included an explosive TV interview and a tell-all book several months later.<\/p>\n

Following a bombshell interview on E-tv\u2019s My Guest Tonight with Annika Larsen<\/em> in February, De Ruyter left Eskom with immediate effect \u2014 around a month and a half earlier than planned.<\/p>\n

During the interview, on Larsen\u2019s prompting, De Ruyter called Eskom a feeding trough for the ANC.<\/p>\n

He also relayed allegations that senior ANC politicians were complicit in the Mpumalanga coal cartels \u2014 but stopped short of naming the alleged mafia bosses.<\/p>\n

De Ruyter earned further scorn from the ruling party when he said they were being ridiculed behind their backs by people from other countries for calling one another \u201ccomrade\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Andr\u00e9 de Ruyter on My Guest Tonight with Annika Larsen<\/em>. Source: @Annikalarsen1\/Twitter<\/p><\/div>\n

Following the interview, Makwana said the former CEO spent his time \u201cchasing renewables\u201d rather than focusing on fixing existing coal plants.<\/p>\n

He also said De Ruyter dodged a performance review by resigning.<\/p>\n

ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula threatened legal action against De Ruyter unless he named the senior ANC officials allegedly involved in Eskom corruption.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, no one who knows the names has been willing to disclose them publicly to Parliament \u2014 including Gordhan.<\/p>\n

Most recently, the Special Investigating Unit declined to name the suspects<\/strong><\/a> for fear of provoking a defamation claim.<\/p>\n

Gordhan, who had staunchly supported De Ruyter in public until the interview, accused him<\/strong><\/a> of spending too much time promoting a transition to green energy and paying inadequate attention to fixing Eskom\u2019s broken coal-burning plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Mr De Ruyter effectively said was that all of us in government are idiots, and that stirred the backlash,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did not pay attention to Eskom\u2019s generation that he should have, and instead swanned around the world looking at renewables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former President Thabo Mbeki also laid into De Ruyter<\/strong><\/a>, saying the interview exposed him as \u201cthe classical extreme right-wing anti-communist fanatic of the Apartheid years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter published a book titled Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Three months after his explosive interview, De Ruyter opened a fresh can of worms when he released a book titled Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also revealed during an interview that he had started writing his book six months after taking over as Eskom\u2019s CEO, working on it every Sunday morning for four hours.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the book\u2019s release, Makwana said De Ruyter\u2019s actions had broken the trust of the utility in the \u201cmost repulsive manner possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also accused De Ruyter of breaching the Protection of Personal Information Act, the Companies Act, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), and his own contract of employment clauses on confidentiality.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur corporate governance teams are reviewing all this and will take appropriate and reasonable steps to ensure that the board takes all necessary action,\u201d stated Makwana.<\/p>\n

Despite his condemnation of De Ruyter\u2019s actions, Makwana said the Eskom board\u2019s Audit and Risk Committee would nonetheless launch an independent investigation to confirm the veracity of the former CEO\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Big win for private power expansion in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has reportedly rejected the Eskom board’s recommendations for a new CEO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":492155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[61891,86663,31156,181,35,14745,4198,84747],"class_list":["post-508614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-andre-de-ruyter","tag-ayanda-noah","tag-dan-marokane","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-paul-oflaherty","tag-pravin-gordhan","tag-vally-padayachee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}