Only lifestyle audits for top managers will save Eskom

The clean-up of the few rotten apples on the executive floor of Eskom would be in vain if the utility does not cleanse itself of the undesirables in the other management levels.

The new board can only succeed in restoring Eskom to good health once it sweeps away the remaining thieves in its employ.

The easiest way to achieve that is to subject the top management team – about 300 managers – to lifestyle audits. Those executives who have been removed, and those yet to be removed, were not the only thieves. It has been a free-for-all for eight years.

There are mountains of evidence showing that Eskom is the easiest route to riches. In the absence of legal consequences, the wealth is being flaunted.

Lifestyle audits, which would show up any wealth of dubious origins, would identify the as-yet undiscovered thieves.

What is needed at Megawatt Park is a complete culture change, and chairman Jabu Mabuza is the right kind of leader to bring about such change.

The second most important thing that needs to happen is exactly what Mabuza did when he became chairman of Telkom in 2012 – to ban politicians and government officials from the company.

In the short tenure of Dina Pule as communications minister until 2013, Telkom had been looted to the point of bankruptcy, and government was desperate to save the telecommunications provider.

Investors had lost more than two-thirds of their capital value, as the share melted away under the heavy heat of corruption.

Corporate vultures had been circling, with one of Taiwan’s major telecoms providers eager to acquire a slice of the company at a fraction of the value.

Banning politicians and government officials from Eskom’s premises was also exactly John Maree’s major condition when the PW Botha government asked him to accept the position in 1985, also to rescue Eskom from itself. Maree’s son Jacko told me his father had warned: “I will resign the day you or any of your ministers ever set foot at the company without my written permission.”

Botha, who was desperate, as the current government is, to save Eskom, accepted the condition and stuck to it.

Then, as now, Eskom was on its knees. Botha’s ministers had, as have Zuma’s, turned the Electricity Supply Commission (as Eskom was known then) into their little spaza shop to loot as they pleased.

The near-terminal corruption that has been eating away at Eskom comes from the highest levels of government.

Then public enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba was interferer-in-chief in the operational affairs of the company about which he knew very little.

The same Gigaba, who has mastered the art of hunting with the hounds while running with the hares, is now desperately trying to cast himself as a patriotic servant of the people.

Under his successor, Lynne Brown, the corruption escalated to brazen levels of theft hitherto unknown in South African corporate history.

In the absence of these measures to cleanse Eskom, together with the necessary criminal proceedings against suspects, the promising momentum brought about by the ascent of Cyril Ramaphosa to the summit of the ANC would fade away.

There is great hope this will not be the case. In fact, failure is not an option. This board is the most credible and workable of the past eight years.

Mabuza is surrounded by honest and courageous leaders, many of whom have no need to make a cent more.

The presence of people like Sifiso Dabengwa, Nelisiwe Magubane and Mark Lamberti on the board should be seen for what it is: service to the nation. But their task is huge. They deserve every bit of support. Mine they have.