Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom

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A visit to Kriel power station in Mpumalanga would also cast a harsh light on our procurement woes. When I arrived, I was greeted by an all too frequent sight. Rubbish lying everywhere, lawn not mowed, windows broken. ‘How does your house look?’ I asked the managers. ‘If you have a broken window there, do you also just leave it?’ Ramaphosa claimed during a Q&A session in the National Assembly on Thursday that he would not be in a position to investigate his own ministers as that responsibility lies with law enforcement agencies. The author is analytical and logical, his arguments, whether you believe them or not, are sound. This will help readers from any political orientation to at least sympathise with his worldviews and approaches because he substantiates it with facts and reasoning. This was a clear case of micromanagement, and usually something that a CEO should try to avoid, but nothing else was working. I told my team that the last time I had operated in this fashion was when I was an assistant manager at Sasol. When I followed through, the embarrassment was enough to provoke action.

While the Gupta family had been the shark swimming in the murky waters of state capture, the much smaller piranhas were feasting on Eskom’s flesh.”

Poisoning

I don't know what to rate this book since it's hard to know what's him or the ghostwriters. But I think this is him. This sinister development culminated in De Ruyter himself being poisoned with cyanide in his coffee in his office, demonstrating how mafia-type gangs had recruited at least one Eskom headquarters staff member. Unintended consequences De Ruyter had a plan, which was longer-term and took account of the need to keep the coal fleet running at maximum capacity until mainly green sources are producing sufficient power. The plan is Eskom’s Strategy 2035, which would see the gradual decommissioning by 2035 of older coal plants, which account for about half of Eskom’s generation capacity. This would give time for South Africato embark on a ‘Just Transition’ towards green energy, financed by loans from the West. Lifting the cap on the amount that independent power producers can feed onto the grid would contribute towards easing the power crisis.

The book follows an explosive interview the executive had with ENCA in February, where he accused the ANC of treating Eskom as a “feeding trough” and referred to at least two high-level politicians as being directly involved in corruption. All this drives home the hopeless positions in which state-owned enterprisesfind themselves. They are tied and bound and made unfit for purpose. Seeletsa, Molefe (26 April 2023). " 'Too many cooks in the kitchen': De Ruyter says he resigned due to Gordhan, new Eskom board". The Citizen . Retrieved 15 May 2023.When government and the ANC later tried to disavow all knowledge of how high the Eskom corruption stretched, I could only shake my head in amazement. Surely there is a point where complacency becomes complicity. But party unity was to be protected über alles . With the chain of command being bypassed, I was having to handle increasing frustrations from exco members, even as I myself was bypassed and excluded. Professor Malegapuru Makgoba had been a diligent chairman, dedicating Thursdays to signing documents. My office and the chairman’s office, under the capable stewardship of Zodwa Mantyi, had run like a well-oiled machine, with letters to ministers (which for protocol reasons I was not allowed to sign) being churned out as well as requests for exemptions from Treasury, reports to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy on Koeberg, and correspondence to the chairs of parliamentary portfolio committees – all the bureaucratic baggage so favoured by the satraps and panjandrums in their dusty Pretoria offices. For the ANC’S 97 million pieces of silver, the taxpayer is paying billions. Because of Kusile’s design flaws, we’ve lost around 2 100MW of generation capacity during 2023, enough to eliminate two stages of load shedding,” writes De Ruyter. “To fix only some of the boiler mistakes will cost R4.2-billion and we’ve already burnt R30-billion of diesel due to lost capacity.” ‘Common denominator’ Despite clearly being oriented towards the big picture, some, albeit minute sections of the book contained what felt like filler. Sometimes, to bring a point forward, he would begin with a relevant story, but then drag the story out and deliver underwhelming substance to the respecting point - leading to an anticlimactic effect. Note, this happens max twice as I recall.

Energy minister Gwede Mantashe calls the book a “novel” that is “basically a diary, there is nothing novel about it — it’s a diary of meetings he has had”.In a meeting with Gordhan at a secure location in Pretoria the following day, where we discussed progress on intelligence-gathering in Mpumalanga with a senior police officer and intelligence operatives, I expressed my concern at the looming SSA fishing expedition, where my personal details would be at the mercy of people who had demonstrated no interest in my welfare. When I walked with Gordhan to our vehicles, I told him that Mantashe’s statements were unacceptable. I told him that I was considering resigning because I did not want my integrity impugned. Gordhan’s response was characteristic: ‘Hold on,’ he said, ‘I will tell you when it is time to go.’ The notion that the state capture project ended when the Guptas’ ZS-OAK departed Lanseria, allegedly laden to the gunwales with loot, is sadly mistaken. Like a cancerous tumour that has been removed, the residual corruption has metastasised and spread even more widely through South Africa’s body politic. The collective sigh of relief that everyone heaved after Ramaphosa’s 2018 victory at Nasrec, and the notion that we could start on a clean slate, with the original sin of the ANC forgiven and forgotten, has come to naught. On a tour of a Japanese power station, De Ruyter says he was given white gloves and says that he could have eaten off the floor. De Ruyter’s book mentions organising a routine Eskom stakeholders’ meeting at a guesthouse in Mpumalanga province. The former Eskom CEO alleged that a senior police officer received instructions “from the Union Buildings” to make sure that criminals caught stealing coal in Mpumalanga were not arrested.