By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) has rejected a Democratic Alliance (DA) proposal to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the allegations of fraud, corruption and sabotage at Eskom made by former CEO André de Ruyter and in intelligence reports.
De Ruyter made several serious allegations of entrenched corruption at Eskom, said to be orchestrated and perpetrated by high-ranking ANC officials.
Without naming any individuals, the former Eskom CEO said that government officials were deeply involved in corrupt activity at Eskom. When he took it up with a cabinet minister – later revealed to be Public Enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan – nothing was done.
De Ruyter’s allegations were non-specific, but made it clear that the ANC was rooted in graft at the embattled power utility and was using the state-owned company as a “feeding trough”.
The ANC rejected and denied the allegations, calling for proof. The party has also launched legal action against De Ruyter and Eskom to have the comment retracted.
Despite the ANC’s vehement denial of the allegations, its appetite for further investigations by parliament into the matter is lacking.
During a parliamentary sitting this week, the party’s MPs rejected calls by opposition parties for an ad hoc committee to be established to investigate De Ruyter’s claims, saying that the respective portfolio committees for Mineral Resources and Energy and Public Enterprises can already do the job.
A vote on establishing the ad hoc committee will be held next week. As has been the case with several attempts to investigate matters of corruption before, it is anticipated that the ANC will use its current majority in parliament to shoot this down.
Despite the chances of a focused ad hoc committee being slim to nothing, Scopa said that there was unanimous agreement in the committee for further investigations into De Ruyter’s claims to take place.
“To this effect, it engaged the Parliamentary Legal Office to establish the constitutional basis and scope of such an investigation’s terms of reference. The legal office provided the committee with the broad parameters for the terms of reference for such an inquiry,” it said.
The committee said that it would wait until the vote on the ad hoc committee takes place so as not to run parallel processes. Scopa members said that the ad hoc committee would be the preferable route for this kind of investigation, due to the limited mandates of other channels.