By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Cabinet has approved a new board of directors at struggling state-owned power utility Eskom, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said on Friday.
Gordhan told a media that the new board would be chaired by Mpho Makwana.
He met with the directors of Eskom on Tuesday to inform them he would “restructure and reconstitute” the board, and thanked them for their service.
The term of the board ended in 2021, Gordhan has said on dozens of occasions over the past 18 months that he was “reviewing” the board.
Eskom can have a maximum of 13 non-executive directors. There was eight vacancies on the board, following the resignation of Business Leadership SA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso.
Gordhan told MPs on Wednesday that the future of Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and other top executives would be determined by the new board, which will conduct a thorough review of their performance.
The full list of board members is below:
- Mpho Makwana
- Busisiwe Vilakazi
- Clive le Roux
- Lwazi Goqwana
- Leslie Mkhabela
- Mteto Nyati
- Fathima Gany
- Ayanda Mafukela
- Tsakani Mthombeni
- Claudelle von Eck
- Tryphosa Ramano
- Bheki Ntshalintshali
Rod Crompton will be retained on the board “to ensure continuity. De Ruyter and chief financial officer Calib Cassim, both executive directors, will remain in the roles.
Clive le Roux was chief nuclear officer at Eskom, having had key roles at Koeberg and Matimba. Le Roux has been helping Eskom in the last ten years but is now retired. He was a member of the team of experienced engineers familiar with the Eskom plant.
The appointment of the new board, made up of senior business and trade union figures, comes after electricity outages reached record levels this year.
Stage 4 load shedding will continue until 05:00 on Saturday morning and reduce to Stage 3 throughout the weekend and Eskom will update on plans for next week on Sunday.
Meanwhile Swiss Engineering firm Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) says it has put aside $325 million (~R6 billion) as a provision to cover costs related to corruption probes at Kusile power station.
On Friday, the Zurich-headquartered firm said it was cooperating fully with the authorities and “hopes to reach a final settlement with them in the near term”.
ABB won a R2.2 billion contract for work at Kusile in 2015. Its subsequent subcontracting of some of the work out to a company called Impulse International is being probed by authorities.
In July, two former South African ABB employees and their wives were arrested in connection with kickbacks allegedly paid by Impulse to ABB for inflated contracts.
ABB South Africa has already paid back R1.56 billion as part of a settlement reached in 2020. At the time, it warned that it may have to pay more based on further reviews of its work at Eskom.
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Video Courtesy of SABC.