Business Maverick
INTERVIEW — Andre De Ruyter says initial police investigators in poisoning case were ‘out of their depth’
When outgoing Eskom Group Chief Executive Andre de Ruyter initially reported the attempt on his life by poisoning, the police sent a pair of Keystone Kops to start the investigation. He was not impressed.
De Ruyter related the piss-poor police handling of his case during an interview on the sidelines of the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
“There was an initial investigation where two detective sergeants came and took down my statement. I terminated that because it became clear to me that these detectives were poorly prepared and out of their depth. So I terminated that and now it’s being investigated by the Hawks,” De Ruyter said.
So the Group Chief Executive (GCE) of South Africa’s most important SOE, which is the biggest threat to the economy, says there has been an attempt on his life and the police send a pair of keystone cops to investigate. It’s like something out of a Coen Brothers’ movie — a farcical example of state failure.
And the criminal threat to Eskom is real.
“The crime is bad, we know there are at least four criminal syndicates operating in Mpumalanga in our plants and they are involved in the theft of coal and the deliberate damage to plants leading to maintenance callouts. In some instances, there was increased overtime paid to union members. And these are very large, very organised criminal syndicates,” De Ruyter said.
When asked how dangerous such syndicates were, he said: “There are frequent assassinations that take place in Mpumalanga. It’s not reported but it’s definitely linked to contracts being awarded or not awarded.”
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He said the people being murdered were those who “work for the opposing company who got the job and you didn’t get it. So there’s a real culture there of fear and intimidation. We know that police have arrested, belatedly after a lot of pushing and prodding from our side, 25 people connected with theft of coal and they have shut down three illegal blending sites and we understand there are 30 more of these blending sites.
“This is where they take our good coal, they offload it, and then they replace our coal with discard coal which is essentially just rock with a bit of coal mixed in. And that doesn’t burn so well first of all and, secondly, it damages our equipment, so that’s a major contributor to load shedding.”
Crime and insecurity have been common themes at the Indaba, casting host South Africa and its mining sector in an unflattering light.
Read in Daily Maverick: “Sibanye’s Froneman says SA’s mining sector is being hammered by the scourge of crime”
“I’ve been quite vocal about coal theft for a long time and it’s been quite an effort to get law enforcement to do what they’re supposed to. The fact that these illegal blending operations have been allowed to operate with impunity for years, what does that say about the state of our security,” De Ruyter said.
Returning to his poisoning, De Ruyter reiterated that he believes that it was a deliberate attempt on his life and that he “got lucky”.
When asked if he now took a thermos to the office, he replied that he picked up cups at random. DM/BM
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How these criminal syndicates are not the first priority for all law enforcement of a total mystery. Here South Africa blame Eskom entirely, but they too are victims here (but not entirely without blame). If Rama wants to fix Eskom in 12 months, it sounds like it could be done – arrest and dismantle the criminal syndicates! That’ll be a good start!
Perhaps cops are bribed? Along with other local officials.
Guaranteed!
There is no mystery.
When the cat in the hat is a clown, then nothing will be done properly. He doesn’t know to do his job. Most of us will be fired for misrepresenting ourselves as doing a job we obviously can’t do. He gets congratulated for his ineptitude.
I think De Ruyter is passing the buck. While the police must arrest the coal criminals, Eskom should be checking what is being delivered and paid for. It can’t be that difficult. There are only 15 power stations. Have a rigorous checking process at the gate. After three years it is an admission of failure to say that Eskom is paying billions of Rands every month for fake coal and breaking the power stations in the process.
Absolutely! Why didn’t they think of that? Simply because the options of putting a check mark next to a delivery of crap makes more sense than either taking a bullet or going home to find your family butchered.
Easier said than done. You need about 450kg coal per MWh. So a boilers for a 600 MW generator are burning 270 tons per hour – 24 hours when it is running. Not all the coal will be bad. Just some trucks, and the bad coal will be covered by good coal in the trucks.
Inspect every truck that delivers coal and arrest the driver on the spot if the coal is discarded quality, then impound the truck. This will quickly send the message that this theft of coal will not be tolerated. Also increase the staff handling and receiving of coal and create a system of accountability.
I don’t think it’s that easy … not when those checking are either (a) themselves part of the syndicates or (b) intimated and pressured to let things go for fear of their lives
Testing coal is not simple, particularly if you need to do it for legal purposes. If you can’t do it in real-time, then you need to quarantine the coal. It would be a logistical nightmare. The answer is to buy from accredited suppliers, which is what used to happen before BEE was imposed.
A bomb calorimeter from a representative sample of coal is a quick and relatively low skilled method to either accept or reject a load. Problem is getting a reliable representative sample.
De Ruyter has almost no chance. The entire system is corrupt to a degree where anyone who tries to change the (corrupt) status quo is threatened, killed or worked out of their jobs. Who do you complain to when the recipient of the complaint is part of the rot?
Only solution – total regime change and total system cleansing. To do that, we the consumers still have much suffering ahead.
de Ruyter must reveal all that he knows and has learned about scandalous Eskom and the energy industry – a global best seller in the making!
I wonder how many of the disgraces and misfortunes in SA are caused by defective police intervention.
SAPS who investigated the robbery off my clothesline were out of their depth. De Ruyter needs to get reels about SAPS capacity. He is a very lucky man to be alive. As is all SA. We have no police protection in SA. Get real people.
If I needed any more arguments that solar and wind is the way to go…. My heart goes out to the people who make an honest living from coal and for those who built criminal enterprises around it, voetsek!