ALEXANDER PARKER: Business Day will not be anyone’s tool

There is a painful history of SA media getting dragged into political games and corruption-related feuds by publishing the contents of “security dossiers”. 

During the darkest days of state capture, the country’s biggest newspaper was duped into publishing stories as a result of a bad mixture of well-placed dodgy dossiers and its own internal organisational culture. Those stories caused huge damage, the consequences of which are still felt today.

Towards the end of 2022 a security report two inches thick detailing just one month of corruption and sabotage at some of Eskom’s plants in Mpumalanga came into Business Day’s possession. No source is impeccable, but this one is certainly well regarded, and the level of detail and apparent evidence in the report makes it convincing. 

Nonetheless, given the inflammatory contents of the report, which alleges that two ministers are involved with four murderous criminal syndicates operating sabotage-and-tender scams in Eskom’s plants and supply chains, we proceeded with caution. I am aware that the contents of the reports benefit one side in a brewing war for the future of energy in SA, and all its associated labour and patronage network consequences. Of course, that doesn’t make it untrue. 

A dearth of investigative capacity doesn’t help a small publication such as Business Day. We held back because we were working on corroborating the allegations in the report, but last weekend other publications published details from what appears to be the same report. This is why, despite it being an open secret in some newsrooms which two ministers are implicated in the report, nobody has published the names yet. Last week, we decided to confirm that we have seen such a report, that its contents seem credible enough to take extremely seriously, and that some of the details are beyond appalling. 

Readers of Business Day will have seen stories we were comfortable to publish last week about tender fraud and sabotage at Tutuka power station. Alone, in rand terms they don’t add up to much, but if the security report is to be believed these stories are merely small snapshots of an entirely rotten supply chain. That makes it important indeed, because it tells us that naked greed and convenient political outcomes are at least contributing to the load-shedding shredding our economy and destroying lives. 

But I think, especially because the allegations in the report are such catastrophic reading for the cabinet, it’s worth listening hard for other views. As my colleague, editor at large Hilary Joffe, wrote on Friday, there are people — she was in this case talking about SA Revenue Service commissioner Ed Kieswetter — who think André De Ruyter didn’t run his coal plants properly, and that had he done a better job, even despite the criminality, the situation we are in wouldn’t be so dire (“Kieswetter’s views of Eskom and its critics are damning”, March 3). 

While I am not yet convinced, this view is worthy of serious consideration. Kieswetter is nobody’s fool, ran a coal plant himself, and it’s critical that we remember one important fact when interrogating further intelligence about crime at Eskom: the content of the security report does exonerate De Ruyter from any responsibility for what happened at Eskom’s coal plants under his leadership. That’s convenient for some people, be it out of straightforward racism, a predilection for anti-ANC sentiment or because they support the demise of the good ship coal and all who sail in it.

Now, De Ruyter’s absolution from the chaos we’re living through may well be a natural consequence of the report’s appalling allegations. However, it is important that we remain cynical enough to remember that when there is so much at stake it is also at least possible that this is the purpose of the report, and that this may have done the ministers and the country a great disservice. 

The war playing out around the shape of SA’s future energy mix is getting messy outside Mpumalanga. The state of disaster creates an opportunity to sidestep environmental regulations and procurement processes. There is a heavy push for gas infrastructure by some, for reasons about which it is more than reasonable to be suspicious. The recent eThekwini Energy Summit is a case in point. The mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda, announced energy investments to the tune of R324bn that seem so unlikely that Business Day has not even yet covered the story for lack of clarity. 

Then there is international pressure and lots of conditional money to support renewables development, which the Treasury, and ostensibly the president, support, despite reasonable concern that there aren’t enough black-owned renewables companies. And in the middle of all of this is a general election that suddenly feels close, and a president who will want to navigate all of this and then persuade a furious electorate to give the ANC one more chance in a year’s time.

All of this is why we’ve been so careful with the Eskom security report. We will continue to be.

• Parker is Business Day editor-in-chief