Cape Town – The ANC has hit back at former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter after he appeared before Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday to answer to claims he made in a television interview.
During the interview, he was asked if Eskom was a feeding trough for the ANC, and he said that it was.
“I would say the evidence suggests that it is. I expressed my concern to a senior government minister about attempts, in my view, to water down governance around the 8.5 billion USD that, by in large through Eskom’s intervention, we got at COP26.
“And the response was essentially, ‘you have to be pragmatic. In order to pursue the greater good, you have to enable some people to eat a little bit’,” De Ruyter said.
However, when asked by ANC MP Bheki Hadebe to name the high-ranking official who was involved in corruption at Eskom after he spoke about allowing people to eat a little over the $8.5 billion for the Just Energy Transition funding by the international community, he said he was not at liberty to do so for legal reasons.
“It would not be appropriate for me divulge the identity of that minister because it can be construed as general approval or support of the corruption and theft that is still ongoing at Eskom,” he said.
Andre De Ruyter the former CEO of Eskom, dodged and ducked questions in Parliament today. Watch this exchange when he was asked which minister he was talking about in the eNCA interview.
De Ruyter said that he had expressed his concern to a senior government minister about… pic.twitter.com/8nNWx29tQe
— Africa Research Desk (@MightiJamie) April 26, 2023
According to EWN, journalist Jacques Pauw recently exposed that the report used by De Ruyter was filled with unsubstantiated claims.
Pauw also exposed the role of apartheid-era spy Tony Oostehuizen in the investigation, which cost millions but came to nil, the report said.
News24 also reported that the so-called Eskom “intelligence” files or reports made famous by De Ruyter in the TV interview were concocted by Oosthuizen, a key member of an apartheid-era secret Military Intelligence unit, and were effectively worthless.
In a statement on Wednesday, the ANC lashed out at De Ruyter, questioning the timing of his allegations and saying that he aimed at tarnishing the party’s image ahead of the 2024 general elections.
“At the time when South Africans are starting to focus their attention on the upcoming national general elections, it now becomes even more questionable as to what could have motivated de Ruyter’s utterances against the ANC.
“It is curious why a chief executive officer of a state-owned enterprise would go out of their way to affirm reports which are not grounded in an iota of evidence.
ANC STATEMENT ON ANDRE DE RUYTER’S UNFORUNATE DECAMPAIGNING TACTICS. pic.twitter.com/cvlqceFy7E
— ANC SECRETARY GENERAL | Cde Mbalula (@MbalulaFikile) April 26, 2023
“This being the same André de Ruyter who accused the ANC of being out of touch with reality and instead stuck in a Cold War era, is now found to be closely associating himself with dubious apartheid-era agents that consciously supported a brutal system and have blood [on] their hands,” the ANC said.
It added: “The ANC will not be distracted by underhanded tactics aimed at diverting us from a determined drive to renew our organisation and encourage South Africans to continue voting for their movement in favour of safeguarding the drive towards a national democratic society.”
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
