Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom

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On a tour of a Japanese power station, De Ruyter says he was given white gloves and says that he could have eaten off the floor. If I tried to use Eskom money for the planned operation, it would be Rogue Unit 2.0 in next to no time,” he noted presciently. Feeling somewhat insulted, I maintained a straight face, but thought to myself, ‘Surely, it can’t be that bad. He’s probably just angling for a job by exaggerating the extent of the problem.’

Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom". Penguin Random House South Africa . Retrieved 15 May 2023. And the law makes everything difficult. Labour laws make it very difficult to hire and fire. There is the Public Finance Management Act, which ties red tape around almost every procedure. Just to issue a tender can take six months. Then there are procurement regulations to ensure buying from empowerment groups which add big margins on what would be paid to the original equipment manufacturers. And then there are racial quotas which reduce flexibility in hiring.

Whatever the criticisms of his management style and strategy, the man has to be given immense credit. It is a job few want. At least he gave his all to the task, and has written this book, which is a wake-up call for change.

Of course, there was so much news coverage swirling around De Ruyter that PRHSA didn't even need a dedicated publicity campaign. He has been in the news every day since he resigned, never mind since he was poisoned. The whiff of intrigue in the "from an undisclosed location" tag added to his interviews surely adds a thrilling touch. But he touts "wheeling" from specific providers, like Koeberg (which has it's own problems atm) to an aluminium smelter. But if Koeberg fails, how would they know? If Koeberg is honest will they shut down for the benefit of other customers "wheeling" from somewhere else?

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We left, and I polished my letter that evening, making sure that it was definitive but dignified, by not stooping to the petulance that sometimes characterises letters of resignation. And tribute gets paid to higher structures, so that the capo dei capi can secure his share of the revenue stream. The modus operandi is pretty standard, almost as though there is a communal exchange of ideas in pursuit of excellence in crime. Read more: Political analyst Eugene Brink: The toxic break up between de Ruyter and the ANC over Eskom De Ruyter previously told Scopa that the constant interference by Gordhan and Eskom’s new board played a role in his decision to resign as they made it difficult for him to carry out his duties.

The only possible reason I could think of was that the intelligence services felt uncomfortable about what I’d uncovered in Mpumalanga,” he writes. Resignation One repeated theme of the memoir Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, by Andre de Ruyter, former CEO of South Africa’s troubled power utility, Eskom, is that “negligence and carelessness had become cemented into the organisation”… writes Keith Gottschalk, University of the Western Cape. (Read full synopsis at bottom of article.) De Ruyter had a plan, which was longer-term and took account of the need to keep the coal fleet running at maximum capacity until mainly green sources are producing sufficient power. The plan is Eskom’s Strategy 2035, which would see the gradual decommissioning by 2035 of older coal plants, which account for about half of Eskom’s generation capacity. This would give time for South Africato embark on a ‘Just Transition’ towards green energy, financed by loans from the West. Lifting the cap on the amount that independent power producers can feed onto the grid would contribute towards easing the power crisis.De Ruyter’s accounts of the attempt to bug his car and later, to kill him with cyanide, are now well-known, but the meat of his book is the insight it offers into the Eskom crisis and our wider decline. South Africa is Eskom writ large.