Eskom, the state-owned utility that presently imposes 12-hour power outages on South Africans, has named an interim CEO after its chief executive, Andre de Ruyter, resigned in the aftermath of a shocking interview in which he condemned corruption at the highest levels of government.
Calib Cassim, Eskom’s current chief financial officer since 2018 and a long-time employee of the public firm, will oversee the interim period, the company said in a statement Friday morning.
André de Ruyter, who has run the scandal-plagued corporation for almost three years, was set to step down at the end of March. However, he resigned in December, citing a lack of political support to carry out his job and effectively combat corruption. He then claimed that he was the victim of a cyanide poisoning attempt on the same day.
Eskom has appointed an interim CEO – Calib Cassim.
He is an accountant. Andre de Ruyter was a lawyer.
In my view Eskom needs a CEO with an engineering background, even in an acting capacity. The issues are very technical and they need someone with a real grasp of engineering pic.twitter.com/IRuV7C4qev
— Africa Research Desk (@MightiJamie) February 24, 2023
He clearly implicated the ANC, the party in power since the end of apartheid, in a riveting interview on private network ENCA on Tuesday night, stating there was “concrete evidence” that embezzlement benefited it.
The previous CEO, an Afrikaner with blue eyes and white hair, made a series of serious claims in clear, intelligible English. He alleges, in particular, that a “senior” politician is involved in major corruption that threatens the corporation in many ways, and that at least one government minister is aware of it.
The day after the interview was broadcast, Eskom announced that Mr de Ruyter “did not need to serve the remainder of his notice period” and was “released from his duties with immediate effect”.
No government minister has publicly backed de Ruyter, who claims in a TV interview that he notified many ministers and presidential aides about the scale of corruption in the energy sector.
In the interview, he claims that Eskom loses 1 billion rand (the equivalent of 52 million euros) per month, and that four sophisticated mafia organizations in the country’s coal mining region, Mpumalanga, divide the loot.