Bobby Godsell’s decision not to return to the chair at Eskom is a tragedy. It leaves Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan sitting with a utility in the middle of the biggest capital spending programme in South African history, no clear way to pay for it, and one terribly nice guy with not enough experience acting as chairman and chief executive.

Nothing in her struggle experience will have prepared Hogan for anything like this, and if she’s nervous about it then good. The lesson to be learned here is this — stand up for what is right immediately, minister. This sort of thing will happen again. Will you hesitate the next time too? Don’t fuss about with the country’s future.

She should have told former CEO Jacob Maroga to do as he was told by the board — i.e. to leave, seeing as he had promised to resign. And then seen him in court.

Hogan is the ‘relevant’ minister here. Now she is running a string of big, debt-laden parastatals with no leaders — Eskom, Transnet, SAA.  Her failure to persuade Godsell to return (for visitors from Mars, he resigned as chairman after the government failed to back him in a dispute with Maroga) means her job just got a whole lot harder.

Finding a capable CEO for Eskom should have been the job of a board led by someone like Godsell. But with Transnet and SAA in the hunt for leaders too, it isn’t going to be easy for stand-in chair and CEO Mpho Makwana. The first thing any battle-hardened CEO candidate is going to ask is “who is my chairman going to be?”

That pairing is going to be critical. Our economy can’t afford to pay the tariffs that will get Eskom out of the financial hole it is digging.

Imagine the calibre of leader who will have to sit down with bankers in New York, London, Tokyo and the like to raise even half the trillion or so rand (thats about R1 000 000 000) that Eskom is going to have to spend on keeping the lights on over the next decade?

Godesll was a perfect half, at least, of that team.  You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to run Eskom but you do need big company experience. Godsell got that at Anglo American and as CEO of Anglogold.

The fact that he turned his back on Hogan is a slap in the face for everyone who stood up for him at the height of the cacophony of race insult being thrown at him by the ANC Youth League and the Black Management Forum.

He should still think again. He’s young and rich and he goes on an on about about getting South Africa right — the quintessential modern, progressive white South African middle aged bloke.  I thought resigning was a tough and combative thing to do. It certainly forced the right outcome as far as Maroga was concerned. Maybe there’s some dreadful secret I don’t know, but, for me,  him not going back now he’s won is just plain pathetic.

Cheers

Popularity: 9% [?]