State-owned power utility Eskom on Thursday cancelled a scheduled media conference (at the last minute), at which chairperson Bobby Godsell was due to announce that the board had accepted the resignation of the utility's beleaguered CEO Jacob Maroga.

Godsell had, during the course of the morning, already held various briefings with staff, during which he read a statement indicating the board's acceptance of Maroga's resignation.

He did not announce the name of a replacement, or even an interim replacement, indicating that this would be the prerogative of the shareholder. It has been speculated that Brian Dames, who is highly regarded within Eskom, is likely to be named acting CEO, but Engineering News was unable to confirm this.

However, by 13:00, red-faced Eskom spokespeople said that Godsell had subsequently been "called to a meeting", which had implications for the public confirmation of the CEO's departure.

The nature and venue of this meeting were not immediately divulged, nor where details as to who precisely had summoned Godsell. The Department of Public Enterprises indicated that the meeting did not involve Minister Barbara Hogan, who was in Cape Town.

The Eskom spokespeople did confirm that Maroga had not been present at the staff briefing and had also not been at his office since speculation of his resignation emerged last Friday.

It has been reported that that relations between the board and Maroga had broken down, but even in his engagements with staff, Godsell did not allow himself to be drawn on the nature of the dispute. It is understood that both individuals offered their resignations at last week's board meeting, but that Godsell's vision was preferred over that of Maroga's.

MIND THE GAP

Since publication of the resignation speculation on October 30, there has been much confusion, both internally at Eskom and externally, over the fate of the embattled CEO, with a gap appearing to emerge between Maroga's purported resignation offer to the board and whether that constituted an actual resignation in a legal sense.

This gap appears not to have escaped the attention of the controversial African National Congress Youth League leadership, which said on Thursday that Maroga had "not resigned and will not resign".

The organisation said that it was "disgusted" by the board's attempts to remove Maroga and said that the board was under the manipulative control of Godsell, who had tried "every trick in the book to get rid of Maroga" and to "undermine African leadership in the economy".

During the period of uncertainty since the resignation reports emerged, it had also been reported that President Jacob Zuma had intervened personally to salvage Maroga's position, a suggestion that was given credence when Hogan defended Maroga in Parliament on Wednesday.

But on Thursday. Hogan denied any interference in the matter by Zuma, while acknowledging that relations between the Eskom board and Maroga had broken down.

Maroga was selected in 2007 to replace Thulani Gcabashe, following an "intensive process", which involved an initial 270 candidates from within and outside the organisation.

Executive-search specialist Woodburn Mann had been brought in to facilitate the process and the then Eskom chairperson Mohammed Valli Moosa personally headed a special committee of the board, known internally as the 'search' committee, which also included an outsider in the form of First Rand's Laurie Dippenaar.

But from his very first day in office, Maroga faced serious problems, with power being cut to the Bedfordview area, on Gauteng's East Rand, for 72 hours.

Then he presided over South Africa's worst ever bout of rolling blackouts, which began when Eskom declared ‘force majeure' on January 24, 2008, owing to the fact that the system was on the brink of collapse.

Maroga then decided to forego his 2007/8 bonus. But subsequently, and controversially, he accepted a salary hike during 2008/9. He earned R4,96-million in the year, as compared with R3,9-million in 2007/8.