Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan acknowledged that members of the African National Congress (ANC), his political party, have been complicit in the corruption and sabotage at Eskom that has plagued the power utility.

However, speaking to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) in Parliament, Gordhan said other local and multinational institutions have also benefited from such illicit activities.

“Eskom is not just a feeding trough for the ANC, as the former CEO alleges. There have been instances where there has been a link — and one can’t deny that — between institutions like Chancellor House and some of the projects that have been undertaken,” the minister said.

Chancellor House is the ANC’s investment firm that helps to fund the party.

“But at the same time, it’s important to recognise that multinational institutions like ABB, SAP, local companies like Trillian, and construction companies… and a plethora of others have been feeding off the Eskom situation,” stated Gordhan.

“There certainly needs to be a separation, in my view, between the state and the party, and hopefully we will move more in that direction in the coming years,” he added.

Gordhan indicated that Eskom’s operations in Mpumalanga are among the hardest hit, with many actors collaborating to get more work and earn more money.

“Mpumalanga is certainly a crime scene. There are lots of actors, both outside of Eskom and within Eskom, who are collaborating to undermine procurement and other processes, supply counterfeit parts, [and] do a poor job in the maintenance of units when they have outages,” he said.

“All of that is done to ensure that they get more work at the end of the day and make more money, and the relentless greed that drives people in this direction continues on an unmitigated basis.”

The minister said these malicious activities had been a significant problem since 2019, adding that it would require a “huge collaborative effort” to counter the corruption.

André de Ruyter, former chief executive officer of Eskom, during a Bloomberg Television interview at the South Africa Investment Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Thursday, 24 March 2022. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg

Gordhan said skilled and experienced professionals no longer want to be associated with South African state-owned enterprises due to the reputation for corruption.

“They believe that their reputations will be tarnished, that they don’t want to be part of the casualties as other honest professionals have been in the past, particularly in the state capture period,” he stated.

“So finding people of the right calibre, with the right integrity, and with the right public orientation in terms of national interest, is not an easy task.”

Gordhan was summoned before Scopa to answer questions relating to the allegations former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter made in an interview on E-tv’s My Guest Tonight with Annika Larsen.

During the interview, Larsen asked De Ruyter if Eskom was a feeding trough for the ANC and he said the evidence suggested it was — hence Gordhan’s wording.

source:Eskom not just the ANC’s feeding trough — everyone is milking it dry (mybroadband.co.za)