President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a special Cabinet committee in his reply to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) on 14 February. “I have constituted a special Cabinet committee on Eskom which will be led by the deputy president consisting of the Minister(s) of Public Enterprises, Energy, Finance, Transport, Intelligence and Police to be seized with the matter of Eskom on a daily basis and provide me with reports daily on what actions need to be taken to secure energy supply.”

That committee was up and running to brief Cabinet at its meeting of 26 February 2019. This emerged from the diary of Deputy President David “DD” Mabuza issued by the Presidency, and it was clear from the official statement on that Cabinet meeting issued the following day on 27 February 2019.

“Cabinet received a report from Deputy President David Mabuza on the work of the joint special Cabinet committee on Eskom that was established in response to recent electricity supply disruptions and the negative impact on the economy. Government’s co-ordinated efforts to bring financial, operational and structural sustainability to Eskom are proceeding in earnest,” said the official Cabinet statement, before going on to “first preliminary engagements” with the trade unions represented at Eskom, the coal mining industry and the organised engineering profession.

DA MP Natasha Mazzone wanted those briefing details even if it meant filing a request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia), which is what she did, looking for “a copy of the Cabinet briefing notes of the 27^thof February 2019 in reference to the decisions on Eskom. In this regard, I would like to request a copy of the report from the Deputy President David Mabuza on the work of the joint special Cabinet committee”.

The Presidency responded: “The records as requested by you do not exist. The Presidency is therefore unable to accede to the request for access to information for the reason they do not exist.”

It’s not like the Presidency didn’t try. An affidavit by Deputy Information Officer Lusanda Mxenge, also acting chief operations officer and deputy secretary of the Cabinet, dated 28 March 2019, seen by Daily Maverick, indicates various efforts to find such records. This included liaising with legal and executive services and the Cabinet secretariat to trace such documents. All “reasonable efforts” were made, but the documents could not be found. “I confirm that from the search conducted we were able to ascertain the records requested do not exist,” Mxenge states in the affidavit.

It could be that it’s in the phrasing of Mazzone’s Paia request – “a copy of the Cabinet briefing notes of the 27^thof February 2019 in reference to the decisions on Eskom. In this regard, I would like to request a copy of the report from the Deputy President David Mabuza on the work of the joint special Cabinet committee”.

Traditionally and usually, Cabinet ministers ahead of every meeting receive not insubstantial folders with briefing documents prepared for the meeting and Cabinet memos.

But Mabuza’s briefing to this specific Cabinet meeting may just have been oral. As strictly-speaking, the Paia request was for “notes” and “report”, bureaucrats and politicians alike could well argue that because “minutes” were not requested, there was no need to hand them over.

But such a narrow technicist approach to governance does raise questions, particularly as the Constitution in its founding values includes transparency, responsiveness and openness.

Approached for comment, the deputy president’s spokesperson, Thami Ngwenya, said the Eskom committee that the deputy president chaired was not an inter-ministerial committee (IMC), but a special Cabinet committee. “I cannot speak on matters of Cabinet,” Ngwenya said, referring requests for comment to “the Cabinet spokesperson” Phumla Williams, who is the acting Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) Director-General. Williams responded: “There is nothing untoward. The deputy president and the leaders of the IMC (are) overseeing updates. He (Mabuza) briefs and everything which he briefed on I’d captured in the statement which we issued.”

Mazzone told Daily Maverick she would now bring a Paia request for the minutes of that briefing by the deputy president. “Either Cabinet is lying to us and no report was actually prepared or delivered by the Deputy President, or the ANC does not want to release such a report and is covering up the true extent of the absolute chaos and crisis within Eskom,” the DA MP said in an earlier statement.

And, while on this occasion a request for comment from the media is swatted away by the deputy president’s office, there’s no such possibility when MPs in the House ask Mabuza about Eskom in his capacity as the chairperson of the special Cabinet committee.

This happened as recently as 12 March, during Mabuza’s last Q&A session before Parliament rose for the elections at the end of March. The official printed question from Cope MP Deidre Carter on that day read: “As leader of the special Cabinet committee tasked with securing the country’s electricity supply, (a) what has he found to be the root causes of the current electricity supply crisis and (b) how does the Government envisage securing a reliable and affordable supply of electricity?”

Although the deputy president’s office had issued a statement “the deputy president will also apprise members of Parliament on government’s efforts to bring stability to Eskom. The special Cabinet committee on Eskom chaired by Deputy President Mabuza was recently announced by the President, following a number of electricity outages as a result of structural challenges within the utility the actual answers were more of a wrap of what’s already known.

“Honourable members will appreciate that this is a special Cabinet committee and it must report to the president and Cabinet on its work. Once it has finished with its assignment, as dictated by Cabinet, the House will be informed through the appropriate mechanisms,” was how Mabuza opened his response to the parliamentary question in the House on 12 March 2019.

“Having said that, we wish to indicate to this House that some of the root causes of the current state of affairs, with regard to electricity supply, have been the growth of our population and the extension of supply to all South Africans. Some of the factors include the governance of the power utility. We do not think the governance structures are in good health. The financial situation of the utility is not in good health. The operational challenges, the running of the power stations, the plants, are not in good shape…”

The deputy president’s response, broadly-speaking, was a wrap of what already had been announced by Ramaphosa, and then by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni in his Budget.

And so Gordhan remains government’s point man on Eskom, with the power utility board chairperson Jabu Mabuza in support, batting off the criticism and picking up the slack. DM