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Former Eskom boss Brian Molefe finally got his day before Parliament’s inquiry into governance matters at the power utility.
He ran circles around MPs as they tried to nail him for his pension payout, the public protector’s findings against him and his alleged dodgy relationship with the Gupta family.
Molefe was implicated not only by former public protector Thuli Madonsela in her State of Capture report, but a number of other witnesses who appeared before the ongoing parliamentary inquiry since it started last month.
He denied having ever met the Guptas to discuss state business.
He however admitted to having visited their home on several occasions, including for Diwali celebrations and other functions.
He denied having met President Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane to talk business. Duduzane is also the Guptas’ business partner. But he said he him at a one-year-old’s birthday party.
Molefe also disputed several of Madonsela’s findings – especially the ones placing him in Saxonwold and the findings about the telephone calls he allegedly exchanged with the Gupta brothers.
He decried not being given an opportunity by Madonsela to present his side of the story.
“The public protector fails to provide any other details about the phone calls. She does not provide the phone numbers nor the dates and times when the phone calls were made,” he said.
Molefe said he never challenged Madonsela’s report in court because his lawyers had advised him that there were no findings, that Madonsela had made observations and there was no finding to challenge in court.
He dismissed a direct question about state capture, suggesting that the concept of state capture was “a manufactured crisis”.
“When load shedding ended, I suppose another crisis had to be manufactured,” he said.
Molefe told MPs that while people talked about state capture, there was another capture which benefitted established companies and which has been happening since the apartheid days.
“If you want to talk about capture, properly and substantively, talk about those power stations, the power stations next to those mines ... nobody is talking about that capture,” he said.
He said those power stations even determined where black people should stay in the areas where Eskom has mines, and yet there is no inquiry into that.
Molefe said the power stations have 40-year contracts with Eskom which were signed before the dawn of democracy and that MPs were merely scratching the surface with the Tegeta deal. He argued that companies like Exxaro had 40-year deals with Eskom.
Molefe painted himself as a man who saved Eskom from a load shedding crisis. In a prepared statement made to the inquiry, he stated that when he arrived at Eskom in April 2015, the power utility was experiencing load shedding, staff morale was very low, and South Africans were generally angry with the utility because of load shedding.
“The fastest growing app on social media was called ‘eskom se push’.”
Earlier in the day, former Eskom board member Venete Klein spoke glowingly about Molefe’s work at Eskom and how the entire Eskom board was in awe of what Molefe had been able to deliver at the power utility with regards to load shedding, especially that he did so with the same executive team that had previously struggled to deal with load shedding.
“Bearing in mind that four senior executives had been suspended in March 2015, I was particularly relieved and pleased with the manner in which Mr Molefe had brought immediate stability to the organisation and taken control of the business with all the correct results,” she said.
