12 January 2020
The long-overdue resignation of Jabu Mabuza as Eskom chairman has not aided the course to hold management of South Africa’s embattled state-owned entities accountable, but further eroded trust in public officials.
Mabuza’s resignation has accomplished what he and his equally incompetent board have managed to achieve in their disastrous two years in office – keeping the country in the dark.
His terse one-page resignation is an insult to South Africans. Mabuza should have fully accounted for the reasons he and his team misled a sitting head of state – making a mockery of our democracy in the process.
South Africans on Saturday woke up none the wiser on what the problems of Eskom are and why load-shedding has become a permanent feature of our national discourse.
It would have been kudos to the faded “new dawn” of President Cyril Ramaphosa if he had come out and said he had fired Mabuza and his board, instead of waiting for him to resign. This cowardly act by the president is a further mark on his uninspiring (mis)leadership of the country.
The Presidency’s statement that “government will soon announce a reconfigured Eskom board with the appropriate mix of electricity industry, engineering and corporate governance experience” is proof that his government has adopted the shoot now and aim later mantra. Why is it only now that an “appropriate mix” of leadership is being put together? What were we subjected to in the past?
In the event it’s not clear: without a functioning Eskom, we have no economy to speak of. We believe Deputy President David Mabuza was correct to speak frankly and precipitate the overdue departure of the other Mabuza. We note that leadership is now coming from the deputy, Mr President!
Good effort but questions linger
The performance of the Matric Class of 2019 is, quantitatively, worthy of praise and emulation. Many worked hard for their passes. Many, in under-resourced areas, faced private battles about a lack of resources that other learners could only read about.
So we take our hats off for those who passed and wish them success into the future. We are equally grateful for teachers, politicians, education officials and parents who go the extra mile to support their children’s education.
We, however, feel that it is important, given the quantitative success, to focus, going forward, our national conversation on the quality of the passes.
Elsewhere on our pages, we reflect on how the numbers of mathematics (core) and accounting passes have consistently declined. This will hurt the economy in the long run.
We also want us to revisit this idea that any learner who gets about 70% of the answers wrong has passed. If we are honest, how can we treat a learner who gets 30%-39% answers right as someone who has achieved?
Not for show, but we owe it to ourselves not to devalue our passes.
