Brown said she would undertake a consultative process to appoint a permanent chairperson and would communicate progress on the matter in due course.

“It is my firm view that the board and the shareholder continue to act in the best interests of the company and the people of South Africa to preserve the value and integrity of the company,” she said, highlighting that, as shareholder representative, she would be guided by the provisions of Eskom’s legal framework, which included the Companies Act and its Memorandum of Incorporation.

It was also confirmed that no process was under way to replace the entire Eskom board as suggested in media reports. Instead, Brown was working on appointing a full 13-member board, in line with the State-owned power utility’s Memorandum of Incorporation.

Cabinet had endorsed 11 board members in December and that Brown had initiated a process to fill the two vacant positions. In addition, she would need to fill the vacancy left as a result of the resignation of Tsotsi.

Brown’s spokesperson, Lionel Adendorf, confirmed to Engineering News that the Minister would consult with Cabinet on the appointment of a new permanent chairperson. She would “also look at the available skills within the board to determine who is most suitably qualified”.

Regarding Brown’s view on the current status of the board-led investigation into the state of the utility and the associated suspensions of the four executives, including CEO Tshediso Matona, Adendorf stressed that the board was best qualified to comment, as it had decided “independently” to institute the investigation.

“[The] Minister merely expressed her frustration with a variety of issues to the Eskom board. The board, independently, decided to look into the concerns raised through an investigation.”

On the respective roles of the Minister, the board, the war room and the inquiry, Adendorf stressed that Brown, as shareholder representative, was exercising oversight over the board in terms of the Memorandum of Incorporation and the Public Finance Management Act.

“The board manages the affairs of the utility and the war room provides an opportunity for all parties to . . . engage timeously on all issues to enable decision-making,” he explained.

Medupi by May?
Meanwhile, Eskom said that full power from Medupi Unit 6 should be reached by the end of May and that it was working to ensure that the completion of the remaining five units was not undermined by further technical or labour problems.

The first 800 MW unit was synchronised to the national power grid on March 2, and was being tested and optimised to enable its full integration into the utility’s larger operating fleet. Once the other five units were completed, the 4 800 MW power plant would represent 12% of the State-owned utility’s installed capacity.

But the Limpopo project site, which had been highly prone to labour disruptions, was again evacuated on March 25, after some workers began protesting against certain conditions, while also demanding completion bonuses.

The utility said in a statement that it was engaging with its contractors on the restoration of site stability and that it would also meet with the trade unions represented on site. It claimed that 1 700 of the 14 000 workers on site had been implicated in the “illegal” industrial action.

Eskom added that it would be “pulling out all the stops to ensure that the completion of the remaining five units is not hampered by technical or labour issues”.

It also reported that, since its first synchronisation, Unit 6 had been delivering 400 MW. However, owing to testing and combustion optimisation, the power was being delivered intermittently, which would continue until full power (800 MW) was reached by “around end-May 2015”.