Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane on Tuesday dismissed remarks, attributed to his predecessor Ngoako Ramatlhodi, that while in the portfolio he came under pressure from Eskom’s two leaders to help the controversial Gupta family take control of a Glencore coal mine.
Ramatlhodi, the former mineral resources minister, was reported earlier in the day to have claimed that Eskom chairman Ben Ngubane and Brian Molefe, the state-owned utility’s newly returned chief executive, attempted to strong-arm him into blackmailing global resources giant Glencore into selling a mine to the Guptas.
Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane said it was unthinkable that a minister could be coerced into doing something he did not want to do.
“I think we must dispel this notion of revolutionaries being pressed to do things they don’t want to do,” he told a media briefing ahead of his budget vote speech.
“I will allow the former minister to answer on what he says.”
Ngubane reportedly also dismissed Ramathlodi’s comments.
“My office told me the minister claims that we forced him, he claims something that is impossible. We cannot tell a minister what to do. We take orders from ministers. We ask for help,” the Eskom chairman was quoted as saying. “For a minister to now claim that we actually made him take a decision about something is preposterous.”
Ngubane was talking to journalists on the sidelines of the Africa Utility Week conference in Cape Town, which he had opened in Molefe’s stead earlier in the day. Ngubane had been forced to field questions from members of the press after apologising for the Eskom chief executive’s failure to give the welcome address.
Delegates and media had been disappointed at the last minute when they heard that Molefe was busy elsewhere and would not make what would have been one of his first public appearances since the Eskom board’s controversial decision on Friday to reappoint him to the helm of Eskom after a short stint as an ANC MP.
He resigned from Eskom late last year in the midst of allegations that he was too close to the Gupta family, who stand accused of exercising undue influence at the highest levels of government in former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s “State of Capture” report. The report suggested that Eskom bent over backwards to favour the Guptas’ Tegeta Exploration over Glencore as a coal supplier.
Ngubane laughed off suggestions that Molefe might be embarrassed by the backlash over the board’s decision to reinstate him.
He defended the chief executive’s reinstatement, saying: “He is going to carry on where he stopped: making electricity affordable for our people.”
He added that Molefe should be given credit for saving the country from electricity blackouts.
– African News Agency (ANA)
