The ANC government must move swiftly and act on allegations made by former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) said in a TV interview on Thursday morning.
In an explosive interview with one of the TV stations earlier in the week, De Ruyter pointed fingers at senior politicians for the ongoing corruption and misconduct at the cash-strapped power utility.
The former Eskom CEO was shown the door during a special Eskom board meeting on Wednesday, where he is said to have agreed to restrict his notice period to February 28.
He officially tendered his resignation in December 2022 but offered to stay on the job until March 2023 to allow the state-owned entity to find a suitable replacement.
In a statement late on Wednesday, Eskom said: “Acting group chief executive arrangements are being finalised with the shareholder minister and will be communicated shortly.”
In the controversial interview, De Ruyter alleged that he had expressed concerns to a senior government minister about attempts, in his view, “to water down governance around the $8.5-billion [R155-billion] that, by and large through Eskom intervention, we got at COP26 [a UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow that brought together 120 world leaders and over 40 000 registered participants]”.
“The response was essential, ‘you know, you have to be pragmatic – in order to pursue the greater good, you have to enable some people to eat a little bit’. So yes, I think it [corruption] is entrenched,” De Ruyter said during the interview.
“We know of at least four organised crime cartels operating in Mpumalanga at Eskom. Some of them also have an interest in Transnet, and we see that in our inability to rail coal to the Medupe power station, where we don’t have enough electric locomotives because the overheard lines are stolen.”
He added that the cartels are well-organised and are behaving like mafia, noting that these people [cartels] are called soldiers and have a hit squad allegedly comprising between 60 and 70 highly trained people.
“People get assassinated in Mpumalanga, I think the media maybe has become very used to these reports, so it doesn’t receive much airtime anymore, but every week there’s pretty much an assassination,” De Ruyter told the broadcaster.
He also alleged that he had made it clear that government meddling, poor policy management, and entrenched corruption among the political elite made his task impossible.
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