Photo: (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
With Andre de Ruyter leaving the embattled power utility the hunt is on to find the 13th head of Eskom in as many years.
Eskom on Wednesday confirmed De Ruyter’s departure, adding that he had agreed to stay for an additional period beyond the stipulated “30 days notice to ensure continuity while we urgently embark on search for his successor”.
“His last day at Eskom will be 31 March 2023,” Eskom board chairperson Mpho Makwana said in a statement.
In remarks contained in the same statement, De Ruyter said it had been “an honour and privilege to serve Eskom and South Africa. I wish all the hardworking people of Eskom well.”
The Eskom board said there was no plan for Makwana to become interim chief executive, saying that a comprehensive search would be done to find a suitably qualified candidate.
In the same statement, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said De Ruyter had “carried an enormous burden on behalf of South Africa”.
“I want to thank him for his sacrifice and resilience in a difficult job,” he said, adding that all Eskom programmes would continue.
But an energy expert close to developments at Eskom said they were worried that replacing De Ruyter would be difficult because “there are so many of the top level [officials that] have resigned recently or are retiring”.
The insider said when De Ruyter had arrived in 2019 the commentary at the time was that he was not an engineer and did not understand the energy sector, but the point was that he had a business background and it was important to stabilise the company itself on a business level.
“I don’t even think that has been achieved. That may be why he has resigned because he has not been able to actually maintain even any level of success,” the insider added.
Previous Eskom board chairperson Malegapuru Makgoba said he was surprised by the resignation, but understood that there had been a concerted effort for years to get rid of De Ruyter.
“I regarded him as a very highly competent CEO, committed, passionate, highly analytical and factual. One of the things you do as the chair of the board, you hold the GCE [group chief executive] accountable,” Makgoba said.
“But holding the GCE accountable means that you also support the GCE and are able to guide them. For what it’s worth, I used to have regular Sunday meetings with him and discuss some of his challenges and how he sees how we can solve them. And we would plan for the week.”
Meanwhile the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), which has been critical of De Ruyter, said it was overjoyed at the news that what it called the worst chief executive in the history of Eskom “has finally decided to do the right thing and resign”.
“When Andre de Ruyter started at Eskom, he claimed he could end load-shedding in 18 months. Unfortunately, we have experienced the worst load-shedding in the history of Eskom. Andre de Rutter’s gross incompetence is the reason we have such shockingly high levels of rolling blackouts,” Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said in a statement.
“We demand that whoever replaces Andre de Ruyter must have an engineering background, and must also work for Eskom, so that that person can understand all the technical aspects of this business.”
Jim also urged Gordhan to resign, saying under his watch “we have witnessed the destruction of our SOEs [state-owned enterprises]”.
Just a year ago De Ruyter said he would not resign. Instead, he said he and his executives had been appointed by the Eskom board and served at its discretion.
“It is probably more important to have continuity of management rather than to fall back into the trap that Eskom has been in over the past 10 years when we had 11 different chief executives, that lack of continuity clearly has contributed significantly to instability in the organisation,” De Rutyer said in 2021 after South Africa once again had to move to stage four load-shedding.
De Ruyter has faced increasing criticism as the energy crisis has worsened, including from Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, who, in July, said the Eskom boss and the board may not have the skills needed to revive the ailing power utility.
Mantashe told the Mail & Guardian in an interview that De Ruyter would have been better suited at the power utility after the appointment of a “fixer”. On Wednesday Mantashe refused to comment on the utility’s future, saying that Pravin Gorhan would be best placed to comment.
In a press statement, the Democratic Alliance (DA) condemned what they called a “thinly veiled resignation”. They called for “bold emergency action to be taken to fix the ever-increasing problem of load-shedding”.
“It’s time for a ring-fenced state of disaster to be declared around Eskom, governed independently by a panel of experts that ideally should include the former CEO who knows more than most what bedevils Eskom,” the DA’s spokesperson on public enterprises, Ghaleb Cachalia, said in the statement.
Meanwhile Economic Freedom Fighters members took to Twitter to share in the delight of his resignation. Floyd Shivambu and Mbuyiseni Ndlozi both tweeted “good riddance” to De Ruyter.
[/membership]