Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown on Wednesday denied she received a phone call from President Jacob Zuma in 2015 instructing her to suspend three Eskom executives, contradicting the explosive evidence of a former company board chair.
“I said no, advocate (Ntuthuzelo) Vanara,” Brown replied wearily when the evidence leader in the parliamentary inquiry into Eskom questioned her about the alleged instruction, said to have emanated from a meeting including Zuma and former South African Airways chairperson Dudu Myeni.
“In fact, I don’t know the conversation. Why don’t you ask the president?”
Brown was grilled by Vanara about former Eskom board chairman Zola Tsotsi’s claim that he had a meeting with Myeni, who had told him to suspend three executives and establish a fact-finding inquiry into Eskom in early 2015.
Tsotsi said the meeting took place at Zuma’s Durban residence, telling MPs that the president then came into the room and asked Tsotsi if he knew which executives were meant to be suspended.
He said Brown had approved the suspension of the executives – Tshediso Matona, Matshela Koko and Dan Marokane – and supported an inquiry shortly after the meeting in Durban. At this point, a fourth Eskom employee, finance director Tsholofele Molefe, had been added to the list.
Brown on Wednesday appeared before the committee directly after Tsotsi, and immediately challenged his testimony. She was shocked that he failed to tell her that he had met Zuma, she said.
She said the suspensions were the decision of the board, and she did not take a particular position on it, though in hindsight she regretted that in the case of Matona, Molefe and Marokane, talented young people lost their jobs though they were not guilty of any transgression.
In the case of Koko, the only one of the four executives who returned to the company, Brown said she earlier this year demanded he steps aside as acting CEO and faces disciplinary charges for allegedly awarding contracts to a company in which his stepdaughter held shares.
She said in late 2014 when the suspensions happened and the Dentons report was commissioned, Eskom was implementing stage three load-shedding and found itself in such financial dire straits that her priority was instituting an investigation to establish the cause.
The minister also denied Tsotsi’s allegation that he had been called to her home in December 2014, after new board members were appointed.
He testified that when he arrived he found Tony Gupta and Salim Essa, a known associate and business facilitator for the Indian family, present. The meeting discussed the allocation of subcommittee duties to board members.
“What actually had been happening prior to me going there was that Salim Essa would draw up his idea of a board allocation and ask me to pass it on to the minister,” said Tsotsi.
“What happened is I got a list [from Essa] and I would change the list on the basis of what I thought it should be. She [Brown] changed the list back…let me say my hands were tied.”
Brown said Essa and Tony Gupta had never been to her home, adding: “At this point, it is my word against theirs.”
Economic Freedom Fighters chief whip Floyd Shivambu commented that the contradictions meant one of two witnesses, who both took an oath, was lying to the inquiry.
“It looks like we are going to have a situation where one of the two used the Lord’s name in vain,” Shivambu said.
Brown began by telling MPs lawyers had advised her not to appear before the inquiry because the process was “unfair, inappropriately accusatorial and that my appearance would only serve to legitimise a predetermined interim report containing a rehash of untested information”.
It seemed intent on a reaching a conclusion designed to compromise particular politicians, she said but added that she ignored the advice for the sake of accounting to Parliament.
Vanara flatly accused her of being obstructive, to which she said she was merely seeking to defend herself and others against what seemed to be an attack on companies that should be pillars of the economy.
She repeatedly pointed to a lack of proof of mounting allegations that state-owned companies were used to funnel money to the Gupta family through dubious contracts, facilitated by “captured” executives and politicians.
Questioned by Steve Swart, from the African Christian Democratic Party, about detailed testimony of how Eskom advanced a prepayment of R600 million for coal and a bank guarantee of R2.1 billion to allow the Gupta-owned Tegeta Exploration to buy the Optimum coal mine, the minister said she viewed the takeover from Glencore as a deal between two companies.
She added: “If it was gotten through ill-gotten gains, then it must be reversed.”
Brown said emphatically that she did not get involved in procurement.
She said it was at her insistence that Eskom’s chief financial officer, Anoj Singh, was suspended to face disciplinary charges. Eskom was in August forced to retract Singh’s assurances that there no improper payments to Gupta-linked firm Trillian, which had informed a denial on part’s to Parliament on the subject.
“Where I realised that I lied was where Eskom told me that they never paid Trillian directly,” Brown said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
