About 15 months ago, former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter approached Business Leadership SA (BLSA) to help fund a secret investigation to uncover wrongdoing at Eskom. They reportedly gave millions. Later, other business leaders in their personal capacity chipped in more than R30 million.
This reflected a well-founded lack of confidence that law enforcement agencies would sort out corruption at Eskom. Not only because of suspicions that ANC politicians were involved. But also because the state is pretty useless. A decade after blatant corruption during the Gupta years, no-one is in jail. Neither is Markus Jooste. The state's investigative and prosecuting failures have also resulted in South Africa being grey-listed, which means higher costs and restrictions for businesses.
This is on top of the billions they must spend on dealing with load shedding, which is largely the result of government's absurd ban preventing private companies from generating their own power at scale until recently.
Then there's the massive cost of private security because the state can't curb crime. The enormous financial impact of a failing Transnet on exporters. Some businesses are building their own infrastructure, including reservoirs, because many local governments have collapsed. BLSA itself has been funding a programme to build technical know-how at various municipalities, and it has a large project to help supply state schools with working toilets and water connections – among various other initiatives.
State failures continue to heap more and more responsibility on the private sector.
With evidence of large-scale corruption at Eskom, which is contributing to the power crisis, along with very little state action, the BLSA should be lauded for supporting an independent probe. As with the Gupta Leaks investigation, business funding can be pivotal.
Unfortunately, this time it ended in catastrophe.
What went wrong? The BLSA trusted De Ruyter, who had a strong track record with highlighting corruption. De Ruyter trusted former police commissioner George Fivaz to run the BLSA-funded investigation. Fivaz then trusted Tony Oosthuizen, a key member of an apartheid-era secret military unit, which had been implicated in multiple assassinations. The result was a series of worthless reports with unsubstantiated claims, based on hearsay.
BLSA wasn't involved in the appointment of Fivaz, but later said they were "comfortable" with him leading the investigation. The organisation seemingly adopted a hands-off approach, which is understandable. But a bit more due diligence (and a simple Google search) would have uncovered Oosthuizen's past, and the wild claims in the series of reports – without any clear proof – should have been a major red flag.
In the end, the botched Eskom investigation is a double disaster for South Africa. We are no closer to uncovering the real criminals at work at Eskom. But also: given the backlash against the BLSA for funding the probe, businesses may become less inclined to do country duty. South Africa cannot afford that.
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