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When Eskom CEO Brian Molefe invited the media to Megawatt Park headquarters in Sandton on Monday to brief them on the state of electricity supply, Pharrell Williams’ song Happy was on repeat in the background.
Whether this was a coincidence or not, we don’t know. But Molefe (49) is a happy man, having delivered 100 days without load shedding. His next milestone, he said, was to avoid load shedding until August 2016, unless something “terrible” happened.
But things were not always this rosy. When Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, President Jacob Zuma and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa seconded him from Transnet to head the beleaguered power utility in April, Eskom had gone through five CEOs in four years.
Morale was low and public anger over load shedding, which was costing the economy billions of rands a week, was growing.
Just days after becoming the interim CEO, Molefe started losing sleep – literally.
“For a while, at the beginning of April, May June and July, and right through winter, there was load shedding. I would wake up in the middle of the night and come to work, literally, at 3am,” he said.
“When I got here, I used to have meetings with the executives at 5am, but not any more. That happens less frequently than it used to.”
Molefe, a keen golfer, spoke to City Press after playing three holes in Eskom’s 49M Charity Golf Day for children’s charities.
The Pretoria-born father, who lives in Irene, said he had not escaped load shedding at home.
Even at Megawatt Park, he held a few meetings – including one in the evening with Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim – in the dark.
He is able to laugh about it now.
So how did he manage 100 days of uninterrupted electricity supply? “Somebody was saying it must be muti!” He burst out laughing. “I don’t know, actually.”
Molefe heaped praise on his executive team and staff for working harder when he joined the company. He said leadership instability played a role in Eskom’s problems.
“Eskom has had five CEOs in four years, there have been ructions at board level and the current board is new. You will be amazed at how much leadership has an impact on an organisation,” he said.
“But I think that when I came here, suddenly the executive and the whole organisation believed that help was nearby. Even if I didn’t have to do anything, people were just enthused.
“They started working harder and started getting ideas about how to solve the problems.
“There’s a saying that more than 80% of people who are involved in an accident survive if they can see a paramedic or an ambulance just before they become unconscious. I think maybe that’s what happened. The fact that government was decisive, appointed a new board and a new CEO meant that there was hope.”
He said his team’s “different approach” to power station maintenance – a “more structured and more disciplined approach to maintaining the fleet” – was largely responsible for the 100-day milestone for which Eskom received a pat on the back from Cabinet this week. Molefe stood up from his maroon leather armchair to explain the approach on a nearby whiteboard.
“At peak times in winter, the demand is at 36 000 megawatts. We have 45 000MW of capacity and we don’t have a problem. Except that the units giving us 45 000MW are old.
“At any point in time, you have to take down some of them for planned maintenance. It’s like when your car is due for a service, you take it for a service and you don’t have it for that day. It’s planned,” he said.
“But then you have breakdowns. All I did was say to the guys: ‘Whatever you do, our maintenance must stay within 8 000MW and you need a split between unplanned and planned maintenance that’s not going to exceed 8 000MW to avoid load shedding. We needed to stack these units below the red line. I said to the guys: ‘We must stay within the 8 000MW. Find a way.’ And we did.”
Molefe said he enjoyed driving his boat when he was not running Eskom. An avid biker, he also unwinds on Sundays by riding his Harley-Davidson Fat Boy 2 – similar to the model Arnold Schwarzenegger rode in the second Terminator movie. Molefe was a former FNB forex trader, Treasury deputy director-general and chairperson of Lion of Africa Fund Managers.
He obtained his master of business leadership and BCom degree from Unisa and cherishes the honorary doctorate in engineering he received from Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland earlier this year. Why? Because “I know nothing about engineering”, he laughed,
Between keeping the lights on, Molefe said he hoped to find time to complete his pilot’s licence.
