The Medupi (above) and Kusile boilers are substandard, because the ruling party hijacking their manufacturing process for their own profit. (Madelene Cronjé/M&G)
There is a popular line used by those disgruntled by the reign of the ANC: “Everything the ANC touches, it destroys.”
The dereliction of the rail infrastructure; the roads that are not maintained; the collapsing municipalities are some of the examples that accompany this scorn. The country’s power utility is not spared, and with recent load-shedding — the worst we have witnessed in three years — the ridicule seems befitting.
Perhaps you are a “member in good standing” with the black, green and gold card, belong to a branch and have lobbied and voted in the ANC’s conferences and will be voting in their upcoming 55th congress. You may have heckled those who have wanted them out and called people names in defence of the “oldest people’s liberation movement”. If so, it’s best that you read on to learn how you have contributed to the darkness in which South Africa finds itself.
Let me get to the point.
A lot has been going on at the country’s power supplier, Eskom. For most of the ANC’s rule, it has been experiencing a decline. Besides the revolving doors of leadership and the malfeasance that came along with each leader, there have been many more ills that have besieged the utility. The mess began with the ANC’s much-criticised Growth Economic and Redistribution (Gear) policy, as developed by former president Thabo Mbeki and his “inner circle”. In 1996, with the implementation of Gear, Eskom was converted into a state-owned enterprise (SOE) and thus became a “profit-generating” state company.
In 2014 the then administration thought, “oops, we need to generate income for all the freebies we are promising”. The envisaged idea was to enable “economic growth” through the privatisation of some state assets and the sale of others, with the hope that this would result in foreign direct investment and allow the state to boost the treasury through profits “to be made” by these entities.
The majority shareholding of Telkom was sold — only to be lapped up by a consortium of senior ANC (and later the Congress of the People) officials, including Smuts Ngonyama. Yes, he of the “I did not join the struggle to be poor” T-shirt.
Gear started Eskom on a downhill roller coaster ride, contrary to how the Nats had fashioned the power supplier: to be an engine of economic growth by ensuring that it provides electricity at a nominal price, with constant power available to industries to ensure growth and employment.
There are many who will argue that the Broederbond and the National Party’ strategy was only catering to 30% of the population. Granted, that may have been the case, but the question remains, what has the “government of the people”, the one that has been promised “a better life for all”, done to make sure that the utility is able to cope going into the future?
Forget about that bolt that was thrown into a generator at the Koeberg nuclear power plant, resulting in Cape Town being plunged into darkness, and then we started experiencing power cuts in other parts of the country. Instead, let’s visit the much-hyped era when it was announced that the ANC government was commissioning two new power plants (Medupi and Kusile), to augment capacity amid the prevalent occurrence of load-shedding.
As is common with every national project commissioned by the ANC government, the two projects ran over their allotted time and budget. This brings me to the issue that still gives me palpitations.
It was with the Medupi project that a lot of “eating” took place. The once glorified power messiah that was going to save us now finds itself experiencing constant breakdowns. I can bet my last penny that this power plant has had more “breakdowns” than some of the old ones.
What could be the cause of such? Design, human error, sabotage, bad coal as supplied by the infamous Guptas, corrupt staff, as recent investigations have revealed, or bad leadership? What about poor workmanship, political avarice and bad equipment supplied by those who won the tender to supply such? I’m leaning towards the latter.
Here’s the story, my dear comrade. You see, among the major suppliers of equipment at Medupi, the one that has failed to deliver is Hitachi, the Japanese electronics manufacturer and supplier. Hitachi scored a major deal in the Medupi contract where it was supposed to supply boilers. A 2021 News24 article by Kyle Cowan states that “Hitachi Power Africa, now Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Africa, was awarded a R20-billion deal in 2007 to build all six boilers at Eskom’s Kusile and Medupi power stations.”
Cowan, writing about Hitachi’s relationship with Chancellor House, an investment company named after the building in downtown Johannesburg where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had their law practice, states: “Chancellor House Holdings, the investment arm of the ANC, has admitted that the ruling party is a beneficiary of a trust that owns the company outright — after years of controversy over Chancellor’s valuable stakes in government linked deals.”
Let us not rely only on News24. Let us look elsewhere.
In 2015, the Securities Exchange Commission of the US fined Hitachi $19-million for contravening the country’s anti-corruption laws, in relation to the Medupi and Kusile deal, for paying Chancellor House, which it knew was a front for the ruling ANC, $5-million from the contracts and another $1-million in “success fees”.
Writing about Chancellor House and it milking of state resources through Ngonyama, Judith February writes in her opinion piece of how in his brazen way, the ANC’s Gwede Mantashe, speaking at an Institute for Democracy in Africa debate in 2012 in Cape Town, said Chancellor House was “everywhere and anywhere” and that there was nothing “illegal” in it tendering for state contracts. Mantashe seemed to diminish concerns regarding conflicts of interest or the perception thereof.
But there can be no level playing field if Chancellor House was submitting tenders, given that the judge and jury are in reality the same people. At that debate, the United Democratic Movement’s Bantu Holomisa, long a champion of transparency in political donations, called Chancellor House an “unethical” arrangement, adding: “You cannot use a state resource as a cash cow and milk it every day.”
This reminds me of how Money Web has reported that Chancellor House made more than 5 000% profits from the Hitachi relationship.
Let’s move on from the malfeasance of the ruling party, which instead of prioritising energy generation for the country, rather saw an opportunity to get money to buy more yellow T-shirts to dish out to people who will be besieged by darkness.
Let us move our focus to the workmanship.
Phillip de Wet, in an article in Business Insider, touches on the quality of the boilers that were built by Hitachi and Mitsubishi, which later became a joint venture in the Medupi and Kusile power plants. He notes: “In 2014 Hitachi and Mitsubishi Heavy merged thermal-coal activities into the jointly-owned Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems – which became the holder of the contract to build six boilers for Medupi and six for Kusile.
“Those boilers turned out to be a nightmare. The joint venture blamed local welders, and Eskom blamed the joint venture, but everyone agreed that there had been trouble with some of the 53 000 welds per boiler. Worse still, the boilers may have been fundamentally poorly designed to burn South African coal.”
If this is not an act of treason, I don’t know what to call it. So, the Chancellor House “partner” (and by default an ANC partner) makes boilers for our two power plants that are supposed to assist us in curbing our power issues, and these boilers are dysfunctional and “not made for South African coal”.
To this day, why does no one wonder why we have boilers and transformers bursting at Medupi and Kusile — the two power plants that are barely 10 years in operation? No one has the guts to say, “we messed up”. Oops! I forgot, that person will have bullets pumped into his body. Sindiso Magaqa learned the hard way, despite having dedicated his life to serving the black, green and gold movement.
There you have it. Load-shedding did not happen by some mistake or lack of planning, as we’ve been fed. We’ve been made to look not where the real problem is: the avarice of the ruling party. The ANC being the chief tenderpreneur that it is and continues to be, sold out the Republic. They wanted a cut, and as a result their partner brought in substandard equipment. How can a ruling party do this to its people?
To those who will be going to its conference and proudly going into “commissions” and discussing “energy crisis policies” or any other “policy,” you should hang your heads in shame, as you will be coming out with documents that plot the downfall of the Republic and put your movement ahead of the other South Africans. You and your movement will continue to cash in, and South Africa will continue to suffer the consequences.
Thamsanqa D Malinga is director at Mkabayi Management Consultants. He is also a columnist, political commentator and author of Blame Me on Apartheid and A Dream Betrayed
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.