Letter: Why is De Ruyter riding a ‘dead horse’?

CAPE TOWN - This morning, Eskom Group chief executive Andre de Ruyter woke up, put on his suit, kissed his wife and children goodbye, telling them: “I am going to mount a dead horse today.”

When strong statements of criticism and calls for De Ruyter to step down were made, he knew that his days at Eskom were numbered. In a rushed press conference, he defended himself.

His most bizarre statement was when he used the analogy of a dead horse to describe his employer, Eskom.

De Ruyter said it did not matter whether one changed the jockey; if a horse was dead, it was dead – and it wouldn’t go anywhere.

De Ruyter, the jockey, has been collecting millions of rand in salary, riding this “dead horse” Eskom.

Why is De Ruyter riding a ‘dead horse’? Any self-respecting executive would have resigned immediately when he realised that he was riding a dead horse.

But De Ruyter clenched his teeth, telling South Africans that he was going nowhere.

He is still going to continue riding the dead horse, Eskom.

More load shedding. We must remember that when De Ruyter mounted the dead horse in 2019, he promised that load shedding would be a thing of the past in 18 months.

Therefore, it is safe to say that the horse was alive when he found it. Who killed the horse?

Borrowing from his analogy, it is safe to say that when Brian Molefe joined Eskom to stop load shedding, Eskom would have been called a “dead horse”.

But Molefe breathed life into it, and load shedding was stopped. De Ruyter’s incompetence in his previous roles and companies is on public record.

He destroyed the Nampak share price, sending it to junk status.

He destroyed the Sasol Lake Charles Chemicals Project, forcing Sasol to write down losses of more than R112 billion.

He is not the right person to ensure South Africa’s energy security. He is incompetent and clueless.

While many who defend his white privilege and incompetence call for him to be “given a chance”, load shedding is destroying the economy.

Small businesses are shut down daily because of electricity blackouts, the owners and employees driven to abject poverty.

When De Ruyter sends many to the unemployment queue, a privileged few are begging for one white man’s job to be saved.

Hundreds of thousands of matriculants writing exams are staring at darkness at the end of the tunnel, while there are those who call for one incompetent De Ruyter to be given a chance.

De Ruyter must go. Millions of South Africans cannot suffer in order to save the job of one incompetent person.

EDMOND PHIRI | uMhlanga