How Zuma removed Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona and lat …

Matona is now the head of the secretariat of the National Planning Commission. Brian Molefe replaced him as CEO of the electricity company in April 2015, while Matona was still suspended. He later reached an agreement with Eskom and, while he was still unemployed, received a call from Zuma’s office calling him to a meeting.

“He [Zuma] he asked me how I was. He told me that what happened at Eskom had nothing to do with me. He said, ‘We hold you in high regard.’ [Zuma] He told me I was stuck in the middle of a spaghetti. She said the board didn’t want to lose me to the government, ”Matona said in testimony Monday.

The spaghetti

The “spaghetti” Zuma referred to was the multi-layered strategy to repurpose Eskom for the Gupta network. Matona, a strict civil servant, was the strange strand of pasta on the crooked fork. Matona, a former high-level official, had been Deputy Director General of the Department of Commerce and Industry, Director General of the Department of Public Enterprises and Business Ambassador before becoming CEO of Eskom.

The removal of the super bureaucrat, five months after his appointment, shocked the rulers who were not part of the state’s capture networks and it was this that probably led Zuma to call him to the “spaghetti” meeting.

Matona would not play ball in Eskom with those who planned coal contracts, especially those tied to the coal mines, to make them a fortune. In August, the commission heard how other state-owned company executives, including Molefe, were allegedly collecting bags of cash from the Gupta mansion in Saxonwold, Johannesburg or from the Sahara Computer family headquarters in Midrand.

By the time Matona was fired, Gupta’s lieutenant, Salim Essa, with Zuma, had filled the Eskom board with Essa’s business partners and family to push forward the contracts.

A parliamentary inquiry into Eskom revealed how Essa had helped shape the appointment of directors with the help of then-minister for public companies, Lynne Brown. She had been in business with the man who would soon become Eskom president, Ben Ngubane, and with businessman Romeo Kumalo; In addition, she put family members and spouses of her friends and associates on the board. Interviews for these roles were reportedly conducted at the offices of Trillian’s Melrose Arch, Essa’s co-owned consulting firm that had also absorbed tens of millions of rand in consulting fees from the power company, in association with McKinsey. .

Can I go to work tomorrow?

But let’s go back to the Matona story. At the end of an introductory board meeting for new board members in March 2015, then-Eskom president Zola Tsotsi and Brown, who had come to the meeting, asked him to recuse himself.

Later, Tsotsi told him that there would be an investigation into Eskom and that he would be suspended. “I must add that the president insisted that there was nothing wrong on my part. They just wanted me to be absent while this investigation was being conducted. “

Matona had never been suspended before, so he didn’t know what to do. “I asked him ‘Can I go to work tomorrow?’” They told him not to do it and handed him the suspension letter. In testimony to a parliamentary inquiry into the state capture in Eskom, Tsotsi revealed how Zuma forced him to fire Matona and other executives who were getting in the way of awarding large mining and coal contracts to the Guptas.

He told Parliament how he had been summoned to Durban to meet Dudu Myeni (then still SAA president) who, with his son Thalente Myeni and consultant Nick Linnell, had instructed Tsotsi on how to fire Matona. Later, Zuma had joined the meeting and endorsed the decisions.

Linnell had allegedly redacted the letters and documents used in Matona’s suspension, according to email correspondence obtained by the State Capture investigation, directed by the consultant to Tsotsi.

Linnell has appeared before as Myeni’s right-hand man in SAA and in the Mhlathuze water board where she was also president. Both the SAA case and the corruption at Mhlathuze have been relayed in the Zondo Commission, making Myeni a key figure in the State Capture story. Linnell he made a small fortune from his work as Myeni’s advisor, although he had no authority to act against Matona, the commission heard. You must testify to the commission.

Matona, who is now the state’s chief planner, said: “I didn’t think an investigation was necessary, what was required were solutions. The problems had been there for years. ”South Africa’s power outages and cargo outage began in 2007.

Matona appeared dejected to revive his suspension, which he said had affected his reputation.

“That day I had left my house as if it were a normal day and I came home suspended.”

He later took his case to the CCMA, where Ngubane (who had by then replaced Tsotsi as chairman), former Vodacom executive Romeo Kumalo and former Absa banker Venete Klein brought the case against him. Negotiations were held to make it easier for him to leave Eskom and make the case disappear.

“So they said that the option of you going back to Eskom is out of the question. This was effectively a separation negotiation. I accepted the compensation with 12 months of pay and I left it. I cut my losses, ”Matona said.

He told Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo that, in hindsight, he realized there was an agenda he did not know about.

“To be honest with you, the events that followed at Eskom after my dismissal when Mr. Molefe was appointed then, made me suspect that I was probably dismissed to make way …” DM