Former Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter. (Brenton Geach/Gallo Images)
The Pretoria high court has granted the ANC an order allowing the party to serve summons on Andre de Ruyter in Germany in its defamation suit against the former Eskom chief executive.
The ruling party is seeking a retraction and an apology from De Ruyter for agreeing with the suggestion, put to him in a television interview in February, that Eskom could be considered a “feeding trough” for the ANC.
The order was granted unopposed by Judge Lettie Molopa-Sethosa in the Pretoria high court on Wednesday.
“The applicant is granted leave to sue the respondent, Andre Marinus de Ruyter, by edictal citation for the relief set out in Part B of this notice of motion,” the order reads.
This means that summons will now be dispatched to Germany through the department of international relations and cooperation and then served on De Ruyter in the city where he has taken up residence since leaving Eskom at the end of February.
He resigned from Eskom late last year — and survived having his coffee spiked with cyanide the following day — but the company cut short his three-month notice period after the explosive interview was aired in February.
In that interview, De Ruyter said his immediate future plans involved leaving the country for a while.
The ANC swiftly indicated intention to file for damages in a defamation suit intended to vindicate its standing with voters.
In an affidavit in support of the court application, ANC secretary general Fikile Mbabula said the party had a right to its “good reputation” and De Ruyter’s utterances could cost it votes in future local and national elections.
Constant load-shedding is considered one of the biggest risks to the party’s hopes in next year’s national elections.
Mbalula wrote: “The ANC has a right to its good name and reputation. It has a right to protect its reputation. This is necessary to ensure that its prospects of attracting voters during local and national elections are not adversely affected because voters perceive it to be a corrupt political party, and, thus, not worth voting for.”
Mbalula asked the court to apply the standard of the average listener who would not apply a sophisticated level of analysis to the views aired by the former Eskom chief executive.
He said the statements made in the interview were demonstrably false, adding that the party had asked De Ruyter to provide evidence to support what he said and that he had failed to do so.
In a virtual exchange with parliament’s watchdog standing committee on public accounts last week, De Ruyter was grilled by MPs from both the ruling and opposition parties to divulge the name of the minister to whom he had raised concerns that a senior ANC politician was deeply involved in graft at the power utility.
He declined to do so, suggesting Scopa “move on” from seeking the minister’s name, and focus instead on investigating the potential misuse of public funds.
He added that the submission was made in a highly litigious setting.
In the interview, De Ruyter recalled that the cabinet minister in whom he had confided his worry about a senior party member’s involvement in graft, said he supposed it was inevitable that this would come to light.
“So when we pointed out that there was one particular high-level politician that was involved in this, the minister in question looked at a senior official and said, ‘I guess it was inevitable that it would come out anyway’, which suggests this was not news.’”
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has long since conceded that he was the minister in question, but claimed he could not remember whether he replied as De Ruyter has suggested he had.
Nonetheless, ANC MP Bheki Radebe insisted De Ruyter divulge the name.
He replied: “I don’t think it will be appropriate for me to divulge the name of that minister, as it [shouldn’t] be construed as that person condoning it.”
What De Ruyter did tell Scopa was that he regularly talked to Gordhan and presidential security adviser Sydney Mufamadi about corruption and crime at Eskom, and had briefed both last year about an intelligence-led internal investigation into cartels plundering the power utility.
“They were informed. They knew,” he said.
In terms of Wednesday’s court order, De Ruyter has 30 days, post summons, to indicate whether he intends opposing the defamation suit. He then has 60 days to file an answering affidavit.