WATCH | De Ruyter is ‘the biggest flop of our time’ – Mbalula

de Ruyter

Cape Town – ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has criticised former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, accusing him of prioritising writing a book over addressing the issue of load shedding.

De Ruyter’s book, titled Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, discusses corruption, questionable tenders, and alleged police protection of wrongdoers.

Mbalula labelled De Ruyter as “the biggest flop of our time” and claimed that he had an agenda to privatise Eskom.

“De Ruyter has been the biggest flop of our time, to be honest. At some point, issues were raised about this man and his style of management – that he is not going to help us. It shows that for the period that he was there, he was writing a book and not dealing with load shedding and interventions.

“And now all these things are coming out in a book. He does have resentment and he also had some agenda of privatising Eskom and that it must be taken out of the hands of the state.

“And then they instituted illegal investigations within Eskom. He has now gone to Germany in Hamburg,” Mabalula said during an interview with SABC’s Sophie Mokoena.

Mbalula said that the ANC will soon serve De Ruyter with legal documents in Germany.

“I’ve applied in the High Court which I have won for a citation which has been granted to the African National Congress…. We don’t want his money… He must come say what is happening, these are the reasons why I’m saying the ANC is corrupt and these are the individuals involved… not that he went to tell a minister a story.

“We are not going to be idling about some useless book,” Mbalula said.

According to News24, De Ruyter left SA shortly after being abruptly asked to leave Eskom in February following an explosive interview with eNCA.

During the interview, De Ruyter was asked if Eskom was a feeding trough for the ANC, and he said that it was.

He alleged that a “high-ranking politician” was directly involved in corruption.

“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.

ALSO READ | Eskom will respond to De Ruyter book ‘at an appropriate time’

“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 he appeared before the Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and was asked by ANC MP Bheki Hadebe to name the high-ranking official who was involved in corruption at Eskom, 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.

The ANC wants the court to declare De Ruyter’s statement to eNCA defamatory and order him to retract it.

In a recent statement, the party questioned the timing of De Ruyter’s allegations, saying that he wanted to tarnish 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 said.

“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.”

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Compiled by Betha Madhomu

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