AS South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan is due to appear before Parliament to answer questions about corruption at Eskom, former Eskom boss André de Ruyter has set the cat among the pigeons.

On Page 282 of his book, Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, he says both Gordhan and the national security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi, knew that two high-ranking politicians had links to cartels that extract more than R1-billion from Eskom every month.   

“In the vacant office of the Eskom chairman, I told Gordhan and Mufamadi what the investigators had unearthed, but paused before dropping the biggest bombshell — the fact that two high-ranking politicians had been implicated,” he writes. 

“‘Can I name them?’ I asked Gordhan, accompanied by one of his advisers. The minister indicated I should go ahead.

“I expected him to be shocked, but instead his reaction surprised me. Gordhan looked over at Mufamadi and said, ‘Well, I guess it was inevitable that it would come out.’ They had known or suspected all along,” writes De Ruyter. 

Earlier this month, De Ruyter calculated that rent extraction, corruption, and procurement patronage were still costing Eskom billions of rands, even though the high State Capture period is widely judged to be behind the utility. His analysis suggests that it hasn’t ended but has multiplied exponentially. In the book, released this week, he details the funds lost to coal shrinkage (where expensive coal is swapped for discarded coal), procurement corruption, maintenance contracts and fuel oil theft. 

De Ruyter initiated a private investigation when scores of cases lodged with the police went nowhere. He writes that as a result, the National Prosecuting Authority and the police have started investigations, some charges have been laid and certain cases are now before the courts.

Gordhan emerges throughout the book as a moral but now worn-out minister. In one scene, De Ruyter visits Gordhan at his home to brief him on the corruption and sabotage that he calculates is responsible for between one and two stages of load shedding. Gordhan is so nervous that he takes away De Ruyter’s phone and puts it near a television that he puts on high volume — as if he fears his home is bugged.  

A frayed relationship

Either fear or political loyalty immobilises him from acting to secure greater energy security through political cover for Eskom’s transition and reform. A significant theme of De Ruyter’s book is how ANC politics is consistently ranked above national concerns in the management of Eskom and broader energy policy. While the two men initially enjoyed a common agenda to reform Eskom, that relationship had frayed by the end of De Ruyter’s tenure earlier this year. 

“He told me I should listen more and speak less. I was quite taken aback,” writes De Ruyter.