PRAVIN GORDHAN pulled no punches yesterday when he climbed into Minister Lynne Brown and Eskom chairman Ben Ngubane.
“The public is connecting the dots. Increasingly, the public is aware of what you as the board are doing,” he warned.
“THEY ARE INCREASINGLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE ABUSING STATE PROPERTY AND RESOURCES,” SAID GORDHAN.
The former finance minister arrived with guns blazing as a parliamentary oversight committee in Cape Town drilled Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown and the Eskom board over Brian Molefe’s reinstatement as chief executive.
He was speaking yesterday during his first appearance as a permanent member of the portfolio committee on public enterprises. Gordhan said: “That you are part of – either wittingly or unwittingly, and in some cases there’s enough evidence to say wittingly – is a conspiracy to capture Eskom for the purposes of the benefit of the few.
“That’s the reality. Let us not play around with technical questions.”
He said when Eskom didn’t work, it had a massive impact on economic growth and job creation and on enterprise in South Africa.
Referring to Molefe’s reappointment, he said: “This is not just one isolated incident of hiring, firing, retiring, or not retiring, or maternity leave or otherwise. This is part of a pattern.”
He added: “What the South African public is worried about is that we’re reaching a stage in managing governance in South Africa where there are a significant number of people in the bureaucracy and elsewhere – and on boards – who actually are taking a view which says, ‘I don’t care. I don’t care if you know what I do. I don’t care if you know that public resources are going elsewhere. I don’t care how many reports the Public Protector or anybody else provides. Because I’m protected.’ The question is by whom, and at what cost. And how will history record your role ultimately.”
Gordhan asked Brown why there had been no legal opinion on the R30 million to be paid to Molefe. “Why just give in to somebody’s demands?”
He called for the Eskom board to resign.
Brown, the Minister of Public Enterprises, said she did not know that Eskom CEO Brain Molefe had applied for early retirement, but thought he had resigned.
“When Mr Molefe quit Eskom in November 2016 I was under the impression that he had resigned. I was not aware that he had applied for early retirement,” she said.
She said she learned in April this year from the media that Molefe was receiving a R30 million pay-out and asked the board to make a more prudent deal. She rejected the payment.
Chairman of the Eskom board, Ben Ngubane, said Molefe’s contract allowed for his re-appointment.
Ngubane said parliament could investigate if they wished. “Start the inquiry, start everything that you want, take our documents that we sent to Treasury. We have done well thanks to Molefe,” he said.
The committee questioned the fact that the minister thought Molefe had resigned and the board that he had retired.
ANC MP Mondli Gungulele said it warranted a parliamentary inquiry into the Eskom board.
