Electricity Minister Ramokgopa says De Ruyter was a mistake

Key topics:Ramokgopa says De Ruyter lacked skills to run Eskom effectivelyMinister blames De Ruyter’s distrust for Eskom staff disengagementCurrent Eskom leadership praised for stability and improved governance.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Myles Illidge.Electricity and energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says state-owned power utility Eskom misdirected itself when it appointed André de Ruyter as CEO.Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, the minister said the former CEO did not understand how to run a utility like Eskom.“I think we misdirected ourselves previously when you’ve got someone at the helm who doesn’t have an appreciation of how to run a utility of this nature,” said Ramokgopa.“It’s not to cast aspersions. I’m just saying there are lessons to be learned and unlearned from that experience.”When pressed about the predecessor “who had no clue”, the minister said he was referring to former CEO De Ruyter.“It goes without saying that Mr Marokane’s immediate predecessor was Mr De Ruyter,” said Ramokgopa.However, he acknowledged that De Ruyter wasn’t given an easy task, adding that he faced a prolonged learning curve while trying to manage an energy crisis.“Of course, I’m not about to suggest that an organisation of that size can be dragged or pulled out of a difficult situation by one individual, but the leader sets the tone,” said Ramokgopa.“At a technical level, the buck stops with one person, the CEO.”He said that, during a crisis, the leader must understand how an organisation works and know the requirements for pre-planned outages, implying that De Ruyter lacked expertise.“The point I’m making is I can’t go tomorrow and perform heart surgery. I’m just a civil engineer,” said Ramokgopa, adding that De Ruyter didn’t have the luxury of learning how the machine works.Ramokgopa said the experience with De Ruyter at the helm had taught Eskom a lesson on “what not to do going forward” regarding leadership appointments.The minister went on to applaud the current leadership at Eskom and attributed the utility’s recent improvements to their competency.“I think competent leadership is important. At the level of the board, we have Dr Mteto, and a competent board made up of men and women with exceptional credentials,” said Ramokgopa.“They understand the issue of governance and how you steer an organisation the size of Eskom into calmer waters, especially when it comes out of a period of turbulence.”No trust in Eskom employees.De Ruyter took over at Eskom in January 2020 and told the nation that the utility had launched a reliability maintenance plan that would improve the performance of its power stations..Read more:. John Matisonn: Then there were four – Ramokgopa joins CR succession race.He also said the country would experience much lower load-shedding from September 2021. However, this didn’t materialise, and load-shedding continued and reached record levels during his tenure.It should be noted that while at the helm, De Ruyter was able to reduce debt and implement corruption-fighting processes at Eskom. However, the former came at the taxpayer’s cost.In an earlier interview, Ramokgopa implied that De Ruyter didn’t trust Eskom’s employees to fix the crisis at the utility.“The moment that you distrust your employees and lose confidence in them, you send a message that they don’t have the capability to solve the problem,” he said.The minister said this results in employees withdrawing from trying to solve the problem and leaving “leadership to their devices as they think they know better.”Another significant problem was the perpetuated view that everyone at Eskom was corrupt and incompetent during the De Ruyter era.There were also many reports from within the utility’s ranks that there were concerted efforts to collapse the organisation.“There were indeed bad elements. However, most men and women at Eskom are competent, skilled, committed, and patriotic,” the minister said.“All they needed to do their work is for someone to support them and provide an incentive dispensation.”De Ruyter left the utility at short notice toward the end of February 2023 after making explosive allegations in an interview with E-tv’s Annika Larsen.He said South African politicians, particularly those in the ANC, were complicit in corruption and power station sabotage that has hammered the utility.The former CEO also released a book, Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, in May 2023, in which he gave a behind-the-scenes look at how corruption crippled Eskom.Following his quick exit from the utility, De Ruyter moved overseas, which he said was for safety reasons..This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission

Electricity Minister Ramokgopa says De Ruyter was a mistake

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