Brian Molefe is comforted by Ben Ngubane after he broke down while talking about his relationship with the Guptas during a media conference in November 3.
Brian Molefe definitely never resigned as the chief executive of Eskom, the company’s chairperson Ben Ngubane says in a new affidavit. And board minutes suggest that not only Ngubane but the entire Eskom board always knew Molefe had never resigned.
But the board does not care to say why it let the country, from the Cabinet on down, believe for five months that Molefe had resigned.
In his response to Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Front applications before the high court submitted on Monday, Ngubane has only one thing to say about the statement issued in November by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, who said Molefe had resigned.
“I do not comment on the statement published by the minister save to deny that Molefe had resigned from his post as Eskom group chief executive.”
All Eskom correspondence submitted in the matter to date shows that Ngubane personally dealt with Molefe’s request for early retirement – at age 50 -– and the financial arrangements that saw Eskom pay R30-million towards his pension after his 18 months of service.
But minutes from an Eskom board meeting, also provided by Ngubane, show that the board on behalf of whom he acted were not surprised to find out about what it now refers to as Molefe’s “purported” retirement.
Once the board realised that it could not pay R30-million into Molefe’s pension, the documents show, it was eager to have him return to his job as chief executive. This would be “a fair and clean solution”, the board consensus held.
On Monday, Molefe claimed that the R30-million figure was inaccurate, but Ngubane confirmed this as the sum Eskom had to pay into its pension fund to support his R1.3-million pension for life.
Throughout 56 pages of affidavit, Ngubane maintains that Eskom was effectively forced to accept that Molefe had never legally left the company. “Molefe resumed his duties as group chief executive on account of the failure of the purported early retirement agreement,” Ngubane says.
In his own affidavit on Monday, Molefe said Eskom had approached him and explained “that Eskom wanted me to return because of a concern about stabilising leadership and to address operational issues”.