Speaking truth to the ‘flat earth society’

Someone tried to kill former Eskom boss André de Ruyter by slipping cyanide into his morning coffee. Given the reaction of some in the government to his tell-all tale of his time in the parastatal’s hot seat, one is tempted to suspect some are sorry that the poisoning did not achieve its aim.

There is anger that he wrote a lot of the book while still employed at Eskom, and there is frustration that in this book and elsewhere he has accused two top politicians of being involved in corruption — without naming them.

Earth-shattering allegations are all well if they can be substantiated, but by being a bit of a tease, the former Eskom boss seems to have played into the hands of his critics.

Much has already been written about this book, which details the corruption, greed and venom that pollute the corridors of Eskom’s Megawatt Park headquarters. However, one theme that emerges is disappointment with some of the politicians for whom De Ruyter had to work.

“An organisation like Eskom sits at the nexus of at least five government departments that are all pulling in different directions like stubborn oxen,” he writes. And then, of course, President Cyril Ramaphosa more recently decided to appoint an electricity minister to further muddy the waters.

The chief villain in the author’s eyes seems to be mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, whose foot-dragging on renewable energy helped to create the mess SA is in today — with citizens fearful of a 2023 winter of stage 8 load-shedding.

“For your minister of energy to be the main cause of perpetuating an energy crisis that has been going on for 15 years is beyond words,” De Ruyter writes  His book gives several examples of Mantashe’s apparent reluctance to scale back coal-fired generation.

While public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan was initially supportive of De Ruyter, he was too loyal to the ANC to continue to stand up for the former Eskom boss, who claims of the minister that “he is being hamstrung by his loyalty to the ANC”.

Trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel is another who irritates the author and De Ruyter’s views on Patel border on contempt.

This may partly stem from De Ruyter’s time before taking on the Eskom job when he chaired the Manufacturing Circle. Having seen him in action there, I can attest to his grasp of the brief, and to his success in sowing the seeds for the establishment of the new Vaal Special Economic Zone — possibly the most impressive private sector initiative of recent years.

“I was regularly astounded that this was the man driving our industrial policy,” he notes, referring to Patel.

He writes about the dogmatic minister’s love of red tape — and claims his insistence on advancing local production has obstructed the supply of solar panels. “Patel wants to promote local manufacturing where there is little or no capacity, and where the investor appetite is low to nonexistent,” he writes, describing the policy as shortsighted.

“At the heart of the problem lies our government’s devotion to discredited Marxist principles. Because of their myopic views, I find that debating with Marxists is like debating with members of the Flat Earth Society. You cannot win. They believe in their ideology like an evangelist believes in the Second Coming.”

De Ruyter, who is not shy about blowing his own trumpet, claims a lot of credit for securing the $8.5bn in international support for the country’s Just Energy Transition, and one minister he appears to admire is the forestry, fisheries & the environment minister Barbara Creecy.

Patel, he suggests, was more of a liability than an asset during negotiations on the funding. “We were competing with other nations, but Patel thought the world owed us something. SA exceptionalism writ large.”

De Ruyter writes that he found President Cyril Ramaphosa personable, but the president’s lack of strong leadership and unwillingness to stand up to the ANC made him a poor ally.

Large sections of the book give extensive detail of the looting and pillaging taking place inside Eskom — having continued after the Guptas had fled the country. Corruption was firmly entrenched. And seemingly still is, despite De Ruyter’s efforts.

Much of the criminality centres on dodgy procurement, with phantom coal deliveries, and the substitution of quality coal for rocks. And naked theft. Dodgy middlemen are everywhere, inflating costs and skimming off massive profits. Police, security guards and local politicians are bribed to look the other way.

Feeling he could not trust the police or security services, De Ruyter decided — with organised business as funders — to set up an intelligence operation that identified four criminal cartels targeting Eskom. There are certainly more.

He went to see Gordhan to present his findings, at a meeting that the politician appears not to remember with much clarity. “In the vacant office of the Eskom chairman, I told Gordhan and [presidential security adviser Sydney] Mufamadi what the investigators had unearthed but paused before dropping the biggest bombshell — the fact that two high-ranking politicians had been implicated,” De Ruyter writes. 

Having been plagued by unco-operative political bosses and having had to fight off persistent vacuous claims of racism, De Ruyter resigned in December 2022, served a few more months and then he flew off into exile.

In his time at Eskom, this too-white, White Knight’s investigation into the syndicates that were stealing billions of rand from Eskom made him a target. He wore a bulletproof vest and had bodyguards, but they still got him. Cyanide was poured into his morning coffee at the office, and he was lucky to survive.

While De Ruyter can be — and has been — accused of arrogance and displaying a Messianic attitude, there is enough convincing evidence in this book of his integrity, tireless efforts to clean up Eskom, and the destructive and at times dodgy intent of the political and other forces that thwarted him.

Read it and weep.