EDITORIAL: Call it what it is, Minister Ramokgopa

Standing on a chair surrounded by a crowd of Eskom workers eager to get back to their shifts, but more eager to hear what the new guy has to say, the recently appointed minister of electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, seemed very much like a man on the campaign trail. As the minister makes his rounds of Eskom’s power stations countrywide, his message to workers is the same everywhere he goes: neither he, nor God will save SA from darkness, but the utility’s 42,000-strong workforce will do it.

If anyone in SA needs a morale boost it is certainly honest, hard-working Eskom employees who have no power to influence the decisions and actions that made their place of work one of the largest risks to the country’s economy and stability.

But not all of them are honest and hard-working. Some of them are part of the problem. We know this and they know this, so why is it that the minister doesn’t seem to know this?

The utility’s own chair, Mpho Makwana, despite being dismissive of former CEO André de Ruyter’s revelations about large-scale, politically connected organised crime networks operating within Eskom, acknowledges that crime and corruption is a problem.

In an interview with Business Day earlier this month, Makwana said most Eskom workers just wanted to earn an honest living, but acknowledged that some of them were involved in tender fraud and sabotage. He also said Eskom was fighting back against unscrupulous maintenance contractors who were exploiting their relationship with the utility.

For Ramokgopa to say that apart from a few isolated cases SA’s electricity crisis has nothing to do with corruption seriously calls into question his sincerity.

Even the largest union at Eskom, the National Union of Mineworkers, has called out the minister, saying that corruption at the utility — such as the purchase of substandard spares at inflated prices — was very much to blame for the energy crisis.

Any politician who downplays the seriousness of crime when speaking to an SA crowd risks insulting the audience. Top business leaders are now speaking openly about how organised crime is threatening their operations. This week mining bosses such as Thungela’s July Ndlovu and Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s Steve Phiri told of how their mines were being targeted by criminals.

Addressing executives in the platinum mining industry on Tuesday, Phiri said organised crime is affecting just about every industry. Companies have no choice but to spend a fortune on private security “because the police are nowhere to be found”, he said.

At Thungela, said Ndlovu, they are fighting back “highly sophisticated” criminals that form part of organised crime networks.

Ramokgopa might be earnest in his intention to see to it that things are turned around at Eskom so that SA can finally see an end to load-shedding. It will certainly help the ANC at the polls in next year’s general elections if he succeeds. But how will he solve the problem if he doesn’t want to call it by its name?