When public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan was asked why it had taken so long to fill long-standing vacancies on the Eskom board or announce a new one, his response was that it would not help to dwell on the past.
This was a big shift from what he told the media just days before — that the issue of filling the vacancies was out of his hands.
The background is that Gordhan’s previous attempts to fill board vacancies over the past year or so were thwarted by the ANC’s deployment committee.
Which is why it was so infuriating — though not surprising — on Friday to hear him downplay the delay in finally naming a full slate of competent and credible board members.
The cost of prevarication was intensified load-shedding, which has led to billions of rand being lost to the economy and many businesses shutting down — not to mention the loss of investor confidence.
So far, the consensus is that the new board has both credibility and the right mix of skills. These are individuals who will be comfortable considering issues related to energy storage technology, climate change and the issue of fossil fuels vs renewables. They will not be at the mercy of lobby groups.
Mteto Nyati, for example, has led such corporate behemoths as Altron and MTN and has an engineering background. There are two highly respected chartered accountants, an attorney with a solid track record and, in Clive le Roux, someone who intimately understands the culture at Eskom power stations and who actually ran one.
The new chair Mpho Makwana is not only an accomplished executive, but already has a nine-year stint as Eskom nonexecutive director under his belt.
Tsakani Mthombeni has a PhD in electrical engineering and appropriate experience, having led energy management and climate change endeavours at mining giant Goldfields. He has also been chair of the energy-intensive users group.
The background is that Gordhan’s previous attempts to fill board vacancies over the past year or so were thwarted by the ANC's deployment committee
The inclusion of former Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali is praiseworthy — he will hopefully offer a worker’s perspective and be at home in dealing with labour unions, who often bully the leadership at Eskom. This has been a big problem in the past, and CEO André de Ruyter’s recent predecessors will attest to just how much political power unions wield.
Ntshalintshali’s presence is also critical given that issues the board will have to deal with in the not too distant future are reining in runaway employee costs and cutting the bloated workforce.
But anyone familiar with the world of state-owned enterprises knows that however difficult the path has been so far, it will only get tougher.
We’ve seen this movie before, where good appointments have not yielded results. More often than not it is because an ANC minister throws a spanner in the works or the party’s structures let petty politics trump good sense.
As competent as the new Eskom board might be, our ANC problem could still stymie its success.
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