COAL QUALITY
TIM COHEN: SABS’s unravelling prompts the question: what is corruption?
Corruption spreads like a virus, insidiously contaminating the guilty and the innocent alike
Over the last decade SA has had a grand lesson in corruption, but I wonder whether it has been a real lesson learnt or whether it’s more likely that this embarrassing uncle will be ushered out of the house with undignified haste, never to be discussed again in polite company? Have we actually comprehended what happened? I don’t think so. Will anyone ever actually be forced to take responsibility? I wonder. Will SA change as a result of what happened? I hope so, but ... Even the most basic question — what is corruption? — seems to have been glided over. I was reminded of this reading about what has happened with the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS). The Department of Trade and Industry — with wonderful, if newfound, transparency — published its findings on one aspect of the Tegeta mine saga: the claim by Eskom’s Matshela Koko in 2015 that his decision to procure coal from the Brakfontein/Tegeta mine was based on SABS test results. The report says his testimony was "factually ...
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