Eskom board chair Mteto Nyati has dismissed as “highly exaggerated” the repeated assertions in recent years that one of the key causes of load-shedding was sabotage at Eskom’s power stations.
Nyati, who was appointed Eskom chair in October last year and has played a central role in improving the performance of the utility, told the Sunday Times neither the board nor top management had witnessed the kind of sabotage that both the government — including President Cyril Ramaphosa — and former CEO André de Ruyter had blamed for power shortages.
“I think it’s highly exaggerated, the sabotage part... So that’s not something that we really are seeing.”
In December 2019, when Ramaphosa cut short a trip to Egypt due to the crisis caused by implementation of stage 6 load-shedding, he said after an Eskom briefing that one of the reasons for Eskom’s woes was sabotage.
“What has also come out as a great concern is that there has been a measure of sabotage, sabotage that has led to the loss during this period of 2,000MW,” Ramaphosa said at the time.
De Ruyter, in his memoir Truth to Power published in 2023, said there was no truth in the president’s remarks and the then acting CEO Jabu Mabuza and the COO Jan Oberholzer had been “shocked” by his statement.
However, De Ruyter also writes in the book: “To create a supplementary business to supply essential components or to renew or continue maintenance contract works, the cartels also collude with insiders to ensure the destruction of equipment such as conveyor belts and gearboxes.
“In addition, the cartels are involved in the sabotage of railway lines feeding power stations to ensure the survival of their trucking companies that transport coal to Eskom.”
In November 2021, a pylon carrying power lines for the coal conveyor at Lethabo power station was sabotaged when the steel rods supporting it were cut.
A year later Ramaphosa, citing “strong evidence of security threats”, ordered the defence force to deploy soldiers at power stations.
As recently as February ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula tweeted: “Stage 6 load-shedding clear sabotage. Strong extra security measures are needed.”
Last year, in an interview on eNCA, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said sabotage was of “great concern” and was reaching “catastrophic proportions”.
I think it’s highly exaggerated, the sabotage part... So that’s not something that we really are seeing
But Nyati, a former CEO of MTN South Africa and Altron, called the sabotage spectre “more theory” than anything.
“What I used to hear at the time was that some of the people would pull out the plugs and do this and make sure that the machines are not working or throw stones instead of coal, all of that is really exaggerated.”
He said Eskom management was now seeing intentional damage on a small scale, which had minimal impact.
“It’s generally companies that let’s say are delivering coal to the mines using trucks, and now we are having these conveyor belts that are taking coal from the mine directly to our power station, which means if those conveyor belts are working, we’re not now going to be using other people to deliver by road,” Nyati said.
“Then [you are] going to see people trying to burn, pouring petrol on the conveyor belts and things like that. So, what we then did, one of the key interventions was to deploy technology, using drones to monitor these conveyor belts. We’ve been able to catch a few people trying to do that and take some of those through the court processes.
“But as I’m saying this thing of Eskom employees going out of their way, trying to break the machines, I think is highly exaggerated.”
De Ruyter has said someone laced his coffee with cyanide in December 2022, and reported that a former general manager at Tutuka power station, Sello Mametja, wore a bulletproof vest due to threats from criminals, and he and his family had bodyguards.
In November 2022, a man was arrested for allegedly sending a bomb threat to Oberholzer.
But Nyati said: “Honestly, I’ve not felt unsafe. I used to read that people are walking around in bulletproof vests, and we have been in almost all of the power stations and we have never seen the need to do that. So I just do not understand where some of that came from, but there must have been, I’m sure there was a need for some of that, but we have not seen that.”
Nyati conceded that corruption was rampant in the power utility but Dan Marokane, who was appointed CEO in March, was addressing the problem.
“What I can say is that in the office of the new CEO, he has created a project management office just to focus on consequence management and investigation of some of these cases to make sure that we execute, implement action quickly.”
