‘Fire André de Ruyter’

AS ESKOM struggles to keep the lights on and continues to implement the most load shedding in the past decade, urgent calls have been made for the removal of boss André de Ruyter and his second-in-command, Jan Oberholzer.

Business leaders and politicians have questioned whether the embattled CEO, who earns more than R7 million per annum, is still the man for the job or if he is being protected because of “white privilege”.

Some business leaders warned that De Ruyter and his chief operating officer, Oberholzer, had been given exceptional support, but failed to stabilise the power utility.

“The gentlemen were hired to make sure that South Africa has electricity, but we are constantly plunged into the darkness. Why are they still there? The situation is worse.

“This year, we are facing the highest load shedding in the history of Eskom,” Black Business Council CEO Kganki Matabane said.

Matabane added that the Eskom board also had to go because “they failed to hold these executives accountable for their failures”.

“Eskom’s problem is poor leadership. The power utility has enough electricity to supply South Africa without any load shedding, but the current executive doesn’t know what they are doing. De Ruyter and Oberholzer are still keeping their jobs because of their white skins and white privilege. There is no other reason they are still there,” he said.

Matabane said the government was “holding the country hostage” by keeping the duo. The government was sitting and watching as small businesses were shut because of the ongoing load shedding.

“They have so far failed to solve Eskom’s problems. It is getting worse because of incompetence.”

These sentiments come as the country struggles with stage-5 load shedding that has dealt a blow to the economy. The power utility said it had been battling capacity constraints that were expected to continue.

Last week, generation units at the Camden, Kriel, Majuba and Matla power stations were taken off-line for repairs. Today, the country will be at stage 3 until Eskom stabilise its stations.

The Western Cape government warned that the crisis had financially affected the province’s coffers by up to R12.3 billion in a year.

MEC for Finance and Economic Opportunities Mireille Wenger provided the figure to Weekend Argus after tabling the 2022/2023 Provincial Economic Review and Outlook (Pero) report, in which load shedding was identified as a barrier to economic growth.

“The impact of the rolling blackouts is devastating to businesses, especially small businesses, hitting them the hardest because they do not have the resources to buffer the shock that these interruptions create,” she said.

“In 2021, provisional modelling estimates of the cost of load shedding to Western Cape economy was between R6bn and R12.3bn.”

Former statistician-general and former head of Statistics SA Dr Pali Lehohla told Independent Media there was no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind that De Ruyter and Oberholzer were keeping their jobs because of “white privilege”.

“We have distinguished engineers who grew up at Eskom, but they are being overlooked because they are black. De Ruyter isn’t even an engineer, but an accountant with immense power without knowledge,” Lehohla said.

He added that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, “who made the stupid appointment, has run out of ideas” on how to solve the problems at Eskom.

“There is no doubt there was corruption at Eskom. Big budgets came with an appetite for greed, but (the) wrong people were appointed for the job.”

Lehohla suggested the government should look to local resources, especially government pension funds, to finance Eskom, instead of looking at the financial markets, which would dictate the

agenda and direction the power utility should take.

“The best way to destroy a stateowned entity is to under-fund it, make sure that things don’t work, and then sell it for scrap. Eskom is almost a corpse, and the vultures are hovering around it.”

SA Democratic Teachers Union general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said the recent load shedding was affecting students who were busy preparing for their final exams and created a conducive environment for exam papers to be leaked.

“The load shedding affects every part of our education system. It has an impact on teachers’ planning, while the majority, if not all, of the students have their study periods constantly disrupted.

“Most students prefer to wake up in the early hours of the morning to study, but that’s the time (when) there is no electricity, so they can’t access the internet for more information,” Maluleke said.

He said the management at Eskom had failed the nation.

The agricultural sector also warned that prolonged load shedding could have an impact on food security.

De Ruyter agreed to a meeting with agricultural lobby group AgriSA to discuss the outlook for load shedding in the coming weeks.

“With load shedding escalating as South Africa enters the summer crop planting season, the current energy crisis may have implications for food security into the coming year unless farmers can put measures in place to mitigate against the effects of load shedding,” AgriSA said.

The organisation said the agricultural sector spent approximately R9bn on electricity in 2021.

“This is more than 7% of the sector’s expenditure on intermediate goods and services. A reliable power supply is especially critical for the sector’s irrigation and water treatment.”

The EFF has also called for “the immediate firing of the Eskom board, CEO and COO”.

“The incompetence and arrogance of Eskom executives have plunged South Africa into a perpetual and unwarranted darkness that is killing businesses and livelihoods,” the party said.

“The government must immediately fire De Ruyter, together with Oberholzer and the board.”

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA also called for “clueless De Ruyter” to be fired and condemned him and the board “for continuously subjecting the country to relentless load shedding”.

The union also called for Gordhan to be fired because he “cannot fix anything”.

The union added that nothing would change as long as Gordhan was “in charge of state-owned entities”.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the utility apologised for the continued and unfortunate load shedding, which, he said, was implemented only as a last resort given the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.