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By Alexander Winning, Kopano Gumbi
Power outages hit record levels in 2022
Eskom has had board vacancies for years
Incoming chairman previously served on board
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JOHANNESBURG, Sept 30 (Reuters) - South Africa’s cabinet on Friday approved a new board of directors at struggling state-owned power utility Eskom, after electricity outages reached record levels this year.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told a news conference that the new board would assume its duties on Saturday and would be chaired by Mpho Makwana, who previously served on the Eskom board and currently chairs the Nedbank board.
Other new board members include senior business figures like Mteto Nyati, who has held executive positions at telecoms company MTN and technology firm Altron, and former trade unionist Bheki Ntshalintshali.
Gordhan told reporters that Andre de Ruyter remained Eskom chief executive officer and Calib Cassim chief financial officer, but the new board is expected to review their performance as well as that of the entire management.
Saddled with unreliable coal-fired power stations and a mountain of debt, Eskom has struggled to meet electricity demand in Africa’s most industrialised nation for more than a decade.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has been trying to reform Eskom to make it more efficient since becoming head of state in 2018 but his administration has made slow progress, fuelling public frustration.
Eskom has had vacancies on its board for several years.
Since January 2020 the board has been headed by Malegapuru William Makgoba, who took up the post after the previous chairman resigned following another period of major power cuts.
Eskom’s spokesman declined comment on the board appointments, saying they were a shareholder affair, referring to the government.
Ramaphosa made fresh pledges to tackle the country’s power crisis in July, including slashing red tape and buying surplus electricity from private producers.
The finance minister Enoch Godongwana is also expected to outline government plans to deal with Eskom’s roughly 400 billion rand ($22 billion) debt burden at next month’s mid-term budget. He has said there is agreement that the government will have to take on some of Eskom’s debt, but the question remains how much of it the state could absorb. ($1 = 17.9697 rand) (Reporting by Alexander Winning and Kopano Gumbi; Editing by Editing by Catherine Evans, Mark Porter and James Macharia Chege)
