MPs vote against Eskom corruption probe

MPs have voted against establishing a panel to investigate claims of corruption at Eskom.

The electricity supplier is allegedly losing about R1-billion/month due to graft and theft, Eskom’s former CEO, André de Ruyter, said during an interview with e.tv. The alleged fraud involved people linked to the ANC, he said.

A day later, Eskom announced that De Ruyter would leave the company with immediate effect, instead of 31 March as previously scheduled. He had resigned in December.

South Africa’s municipalities owed the state power power utility R56.3-billion by the end of last year, a debt that’s continued to rise, deputy President Paul Mashatile said.

“It is clear that we need a debt relief strategy that will acknowledge the inherent risk of unviable municipalities,” he told MPs in Cape Town on Thursday. “Eskom will provide incentivised relief to municipalities whose debt is unaffordable. However, the relief will come with conditions that will ensure there is no repeat of debt build-up over time.”

Municipalities will be required to install additional prepaid electricity meters, and use their budgetary allocations more effectively and efficiently to qualify for assistance, according to the deputy president.

Economic toll

Blackouts have reduced the potential size of South Africa’s economy by almost a fifth since they started being imposed around 2008, according to Lungile Mashele, sector specialist for energy and infrastructure at the Public Investment Corp, South Africa’s biggest fund manager.

Outages can be expected every week this year and if the inadequate electricity generation situation isn’t addressed, the prospects for economic growth will be dismal, she told a conference in Johannesburg.

Consumer confidence plunged in the first quarter as intense power outages hamstrung economic activity and stoked food-price inflation.

Read: Consumer confidence plunges on severe load shedding

A quarterly index measuring sentiment fell to -23 in the three months to March from -8 in the previous quarter, First National Bank said. That’s the lowest level since the second quarter of 2022, when deadly floods wrought havoc in KwaZulu-Natal and the impact of the war in Ukraine started to manifest.  — Amogelang Mbatha and Paul Vecchiatto, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP

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