Johannesburg - Politicians and business leaders are calling for the removal of Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter as the power utility fails to keep the lights on.
Many of those who spoke to The Sunday Independent this week said the embattled CEO was still in charge and earning more than R7 million per annum because of “white privilege”.
They said De Ruyter and his chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, had to go.
Senior business leaders and politicians told The Sunday Independent that De Ruyter and Oberholzer “were given all the exceptional support they needed, but failed to stabilise the power utility or the grid”.
“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 had to go with De Ruyter and Oberholzer 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 (why) they are still there," he said.
The sentiments come as the country struggles with stage-6 load shedding that has brought the economy and everyday life to a standstill. The power utility said it had been battling capacity constraints that were expected to continue throughout the week.
Last week, generation units at the Camden, Kriel, Majuba and Matla power stations were taken off-line for repairs. From Sunday, the country will be at stage 3 until Eskom manages to stabilise its stations.
Eskom said the load shedding over the weekend was to replenish the pumped storage-dam levels, which had been used over the past week.
It further indicated that it was experiencing constraints from its diesel suppliers that were affecting the availability of bulk diesel for the Ankerlig and Gourikwa open-cycle gas turbines, which had a combined capacity of 2 000MW.
With Eskom's many challenges, Matabane said the government was “holding the country hostage” by keeping De Ruyter and Oberholzer in their jobs. It was sitting aside and watching as they killed a lot of small businesses because of the ongoing load shedding, which was now happening every day.
“They have so far failed to solve Eskom’s problems. It is getting worse because of incompetence,” he added.
Matabane’s sentiments were echoed by former statistician-general and former head of Statistics SA Dr Pali Lehohla, who told The Sunday Independent 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 the minister “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 that 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 state-owned entity is to underfund it, make sure that things don’t work, and then sell it for scrap. Eskom is almost a corpse, and 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.
“Imagine if a question paper is stuck in the printing machine for hours during load shedding. Anybody can make notes of those questions and share them.
“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.
The current management at Eskom had failed the nation.
“There is no management at Eskom," he said.
The Economic Freedom Fighters has also called for “the immediate firing of the Eskom board, CEO and COO.”
In a statement, the party said De Ruyter and Oberholzer were “incompetent and useless”.
“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, before the end of the day,” it added, while threatening “to take more radical steps” if the government did not dismiss them.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA also called for the firing of “clueless De Ruyter” and condemned him and the board “for continuously subjecting the country to relentless load shedding”.
The union also called for Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to be fired too because he “cannot fix anything”. The union added that nothing would change as long as Gordhan was “in charge of state-owned entities”.
While South Africans were sitting in the dark facing ridiculous load shedding that was also crippling our fragile economy, De Ruyter, Oberholzer and the board were laughing all the way to the bank, as they earned more than R20 million in the past financial year. De Ruyter was taking home more than R7 million, while Oberholzer earned R5.4 million per annum.
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.
“While some generation units are anticipated to return to service, it is necessary to continue the stage-5 load shedding to limit the use of the emergency generation reserves.
“The emergency generation reserves are severely constrained by extensive utilisation to supplement generation capacity. We currently have 4 098MW on planned maintenance, while another 17 121MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns,” he said.
Load shedding has significantly affected the country's ailing economy. Stats SA reported that the country’s GDP decreased by 0.7% in the second quarter of 2022. It attributed that decline to load shedding.
The Bureau of Economic Research said the latest series of blackouts could have a similar impact on the country's GDP in the third quarter. Load shedding is also destroying the country's job market.
The DA’s Gauteng spokesperson for finance and e-government, Patrick Atkinson, said businesses in the province were suffering major financial losses because of the latest round of rolling blackouts.
He said that with stage-5 load shedding some businesses would be without electricity for at least eight hours a day.
"This is a full work day, which means that businesses are only able to trade for a few hours at a time.
“There are at least 2 515 000 unemployed Gauteng residents, and this number is expected to increase by the end of the year because of load shedding.
“According to some businesses the DA interacted with this week, they had lost about a third of their revenue over the last four days alone, making them unprofitable," he said.