FORMER public enterprises minister Lynne Brown gave new Eskom board members the impression they must suspend its executives.
This is according to the evidence of former Eskom board member and acting CEO Zethembe Khoza at the Zondo commission yesterday.
He said the minister did not expressly tell them what to do, but she said they must read between the lines.
“Even though it was not explicit, it was my understanding that the four executives had to step aside,” said Khoza.
The board took a decision to suspend CEO Tshediso Matona, finance director Tsholofelo Molefe, group capital executive Dan Marokane and technology and commercial executive, Matshela Koko on 11 March 2015.
Khoza said taking into account that the board had just been appointed in December 2014 and that it had not developed good dialogue with the minister, it did not challenge Brown when she raised issues that led to the suspensions of the executives.
He said another challenge the board faced was that its chairman Zola Tsotsi had told them the instruction to suspend the executives came from former president Jacob Zuma.
“With the information we had at a time, we thought it was enough (to effect suspension). We did not ask her for the need or justification for the suspension,” said Khoza.
Evidence leader Pule Seleka told Khoza that according to former Eskom legal head Suzanne Daniels, Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa told her about an impending suspension of managers.
Khoza said he would be concerned if someone outside of Eskom knew that executives would be suspended before board members knew about it.
Khoza denied that when Koko was about to get suspended for the second time, he left a board meeting and called one of the Gupta brothers. This evidence was given by Eskom reputation manager Khulani Qoma, who said a short while later‚ Brown phoned to stop the suspension.
He said he had never met or spoken to any of the Gupta brothers.
