Eskom chairman urges government to act on leadership and law

Key topics:Nyati urges ethical, capable leadership across all state institutionsGovernment must make it easy to do business in South AfricaLaw and order must be restored to ensure safety and justice.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 every morning on 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..By Jan Vermeulen.Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati says the Government of National Unity (GNU) should focus on appointing ethical leaders, making it easy to do business, and restoring law and order in South Africa.Speaking at the 2026 BizNews conference in Hermanus this week, Nyati said that these three key issues would help South Africa prosper. He also highlighted South Africa’s foreign policy as a problem.“When you look at it now from a geopolitical perspective, our non-aligned stance makes perfect sense,” stated Nyati.He said everyone understands the meaning conveyed by saying South Africa is non-aligned. “We say we trade with everyone. We say we take no sides in these great power games. We say that we put South Africa first.”However, Nyati said that these are not the principles we see put into practice. “Instead, we are seeing selective partnership, and that is where I think we are going wrong as a country,” he said.“We really do need to move back to our non-aligned stance. And non-alignment only works if we are strong. Strong economy, strong institutions, and strong rule of law.”.Read more:.Restoring federalism: A path to transformative governance in South Africa - Ayanda Zulu.To foster that strength, Nyati said the South African government must lock in three non-negotiable fundamentals:End cadre deployment and appoint ethical, capable leaders everywhere.Make it easy to do business in South Africa.Restore law and order..“Appointing people who can’t run a spaza shop to run a city is not transformation. Cadre deployment has cost us dearly. Competent deployment will rescue us,” Nyati said.“When I say appoint ethical, capable leaders everywhere, I mean everywhere. We are talking state-owned enterprises, departments, schools, hospitals.”Regarding state-owned enterprises in particular, Nyati held up Eskom CEO Dan Marokane as a sterling example of a capable, ethical leader.“Leadership matters. It starts there at the top. These are the people who are setting the tone. The appointment of these leaders has to be our priority.”Leadership, business, and crime.Nyati said that Eskom must not be the exception. Capable, ethical leadership must be everywhere, including all of South Africa’s state-owned enterprises.“When I talk about a GNU that is working or not working, when you are still making these appointments in all of these critical institutions of people who are not capable, I ask myself, ‘Where is the GNU?’”Nyati also argued that the GNU must stop prioritising fragile consensus and instead have hard conversations to build a single, decisive agenda driven by South Africa’s national interest.He emphasised that ideology must be abandoned in favour of pragmatic policies that actually deliver jobs, investment, dignity, and growth.Besides leadership, Nyati said the single most important thing is for the GNU to ensure that it is easy to do business in South Africa.“It saddens me when we see people in our government seeing us in business as the enemy,” he said.The third and final fundamental issue Nyati highlighted was the need to restore law and order in South Africa.“There is no society where criminals walk free and the honest live in fear. Visible policing, swift justice, zero tolerance for corruption — those should be the things that you are focusing on,” he said.Nyati said that these were not radical ideas. “These are basic. They are practical, proven, and boringly effective.”He said countries like Singapore and South Korea have adopted these fundamental principles, as have countries on our own continent, such as Rwanda..Read more:.Expropriation Act fallout: SA institutions sound alarm over threats to property rights and economy.“These are countries that have embraced these ideas, and we can see the big difference that is happening in those countries.”.This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission.

Eskom chairman urges government to act on leadership and law

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