10 November 2009
editorial
Johannesburg — WHO would want to chair the board of a parastatal? Not anyone with integrity and experience - certainly not after Bobby Godsell's experience at Eskom. Ironically, perhaps, Godsell resigned yesterday as Eskom's chairman not because there was too much political interference in Eskom but because there wasn't enough. Instead of supporting Eskom's chairman and its board, the government, as Eskom's sole shareholder, couldn't make up its mind one way or the other.
It's now clear that Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga resigned last week, and the board accepted his resignation - but that Maroga then went back on his decision a day later. Perhaps he was persuaded by the Black Management Forum (BMF) and the ANC Youth League that he would be letting down the (racial) side. But his about-face was a crisis for Godsell, who had already announced the resignation to Eskom's staff.
Arguably, a CEO that indecisive (or that easily influenced) would be a liability for any company. Eskom's board tried nonetheless to allow Maroga to state his case, but he rejected its overtures. As the crisis deepened and calls for the government to sort out the mess intensified, President Jacob Zuma finally met Godsell at the weekend. But if Godsell was hoping for resolution, it was not forthcoming. Godsell said yesterday "thus far government ... has been unable either to support the board's original decision (to accept the resignation) or its two attempts at resolving this dispute".
Faced with this degree of ambivalence Godsell, not surprisingly, resigned. Any even halfway decent company chairman would have done the same. But the result is disastrous, for Eskom and for SA. Who would have believed the racist screaming and shouting of the BMF and the youth league would trump concerns about whether SA's power supply was being competently managed? Who would have imagined the government and ANC would drop someone of Godsell's calibre in the political mire at a time when Eskom most needed high-quality leadership?
Eskom has already lost several senior executives (who happened to be black). It cannot afford to lose more talent, but the divisions that Maroga's antics have created could prove extremely destructive to an already fragile organisation.
SA cannot afford this kind of governance disaster, especially in parastatals that need the market's confidence to raise the massive funds they require to finance the infrastructure SA needs urgently. Coming after the political debacle over Transnet's CEO, the political nastiness at Eskom will make it extremely difficult for state-owned enterprises to attract people of integrity and experience to their boards or even their executive ranks. Given how crucial these enterprises are for SA's economy, that is a bleak prospect.
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