Former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe has implicated President Cyril Ramaphosa over his involvement in a private company that supplied coal to Eskom for the latter’s current power supplying deficiencies to the country, APA learnt on Saturday.
According to Molefe, when Ramaphosa was the country’s Deputy President overseeing Eskom’s operations, he was also a shareholder in Glencore Mining Company – a firm owned by the exiled Gupta Brothers — that supplied coal to the state-owned power utility.
Molefe, addressing the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture on Friday, said Ramaphosa’s shares in Glencore and his role in overseeing Eskom constituted “conflict of interest” which left him vulnerable to corruption accusations.
Ramaphosa should “not have been appointed chairperson of Eskom’s war room because he was a shareholder at the Glencore Mining Company that was doing business with the power utility.”
Molefe said under his leadership power cuts had ended in 2015, only to see them return after Ramaphosa became president in February 2018 after he succeeded the ousted president Jacob Zuma.
“Ramaphosa is, therefore, to blame for the current bouts of load-shedding (blackouts),” Molefe charged.
On Saturday, the South African Federation of Trade Unions backed Molefe’s charges, urging Ramaphosa to respond to the accusations levelled against him.
The Saftu said the president should do so by taking a stand before the state capture inquiry to explain his side of the story.
Denying the accusations on Saturday, Ramaphosa said he would step down from office should he be charged with corruption over Molefe’s charges.
He, however, did not respond to the unions’ request to appear before the inquiry, now in its second year of probing corruption and other vices that took place under both Zuma and Ramaphosa, as his deputy president.
The commission of inquiry resumes sitting on Monday.
NM/as/APA