Johannesburg - The board of Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd will meet Monday to decide whether to remove its chairman after the utility that provides 95 percent of South Africa’s power suspended four top executives as it battles to meet electricity demand.
“I expect to present my point of view in respect of the issue at hand and I expect that justice will prevail,” Eskom chairman Zola Tsotsi said in an interview on Johannesburg-based PowerFM.
The possible removal of the chairman from the company follows the suspension of Chief Executive Officer Tshediso Matona and three others on March 12. Standard & Poor’s lowered Eskom’s rating to junk this month after Tsotsi announced the suspensions and started a probe into the state of the business.
The utility is struggling to plug a R225 billion cash-flow gap and has to ration supply to prevent its ageing grid from collapse.
The board decided to suspend the managers and start the inquiry, Tsotsi said, denying reports that he’d acted alone in taking the action.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, who oversees the state-owned company for the government, “made it clear that there’s no reason to meet me”, Tsotsi said. “I was not her preferred choice from the onset.”
Lionel Adendorf, a spokesman for Brown, declined to comment when contacted by phone.
Last week, Business Day newspaper reported that President Jacob Zuma asked officials to support the inquiry that led to the suspensions.
Zuma “had no hand” in initiating the probe, Tsotsi said in a separate interview on state-owned broadcaster SAfm. The chairman hasn’t spoken with the president about issues at the utility, he said.
Bloomberg