Marokane tipped to lead Eskom

• Cabinet expected to rubber stamp decision on Friday • Marokane previously served as head of group capital

The cabinet is expected to approve the appointment of a new CEO for Eskom at a meeting to be held on Friday.

A source in the government who declined to be named told Business Day the decision would be “rubber stamped” at Friday’s cabinet meeting.

According to another source with knowledge of the process, the three candidates submitted by the Eskom board to the shareholder, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, were all South Africans and they were all former Eskom executives.

A Bloomberg report on Thursday quoted “people familiar with the decision” saying

Tongaat CEO and former Eskom executive Dan Marokane is expected to be appointed to the position, which has been vacant for almost a year after the abrupt departure of former group CEO André de Ruyter.

De Ruyter resigned in December 2022 and left in February, before serving out his notice period, after making explosive allegations about corruption and sabotage at Eskom.

The cash-strapped utility has also had a quick turnover of board chairs.

Mpho Makwana stepped down in October after holding the position for just one year. He has been replaced by another board member and former MTN CEO Mteto Nyati.

Before his departure there was a disagreement between Makwana and Gordhan about the appointment of a CEO for Eskom. Gordhan dismissed claims that he rejected the board’s preferred candidate, whose name was submitted earlier in 2023.

Gordhan said in a statement that no appointment could be made at the time because the board failed to comply with the memorandum of incorporation. He said the board had submitted only one and not three candidates to him for appointment as prescribed.

In a statement on Thursday night, Eskom said it noted the Bloomberg report but declined to comment on the speculation that Marokane would land in the hot seat.

“Eskom would like to reiterate that the process of the appointment of the group CEO is with the shareholder and once the decision is made an announcement will be made public,” it said.

Marokane previously served as Eskom’s head of group capital. He was appointed as interim CEO at Tongaat in February. The troubled sugar company has a crippling debt pile and has been in business rescue since October 2022.

This year has been one of Eskom’s worst in terms of generation performance, resulting in South Africans experiencing more load-shedding hours than in the previous five years combined.

In a presentation to parliament’s portfolio committee for mineral resources & energy on Thursday, the National Treasury and representatives from the presidency said load-shedding was estimated to have cost SA R224bn between 2020 to 2022 and the cost this year would be much higher.

By the end of September

Eskom has already shed 14,600 gigawatt hours of energy.

This was more than the combined total of 12,400 gigawatt hours for the five years from 2018 to 2022.

Despite concerted efforts to improve the performance of Eskom’s generation fleet — including the appointment of a minister of electricity, bringing in private sector support through the national energy crisis committee and the announcement of a three-year R254bn debt relief package that was meant to free up more cash for Eskom to invest in maintenance — its power stations are performing worse now than a year ago.