Eskom sabotage disappears

Over the past year, Eskom has seen a significant decline in sabotage incidents at its power stations. 

In 2021 and 2022, Eskom’s communications team and former leadership, including CEO André de Ruyter and COO Jan Oberholzer, reported numerous incidents of suspected sabotage by employees and contractors. 

These incidents compromised coal railway lines, conveyor belts, and various components within power stations.

However, 2023 marked a significant change, with no reported sabotage incidents at Eskom’s power stations. 

“Eskom has recorded a decline in incidents of suspected sabotage,” Eskom told Daily Investor.  

“The last confirmed case of alleged sabotage was reported on 11 November 2022 at Camden Power Station.”

Eskom said that since December 2022, no confirmed incident of sabotage has been reported.

“The reduction is attributed to collaboration with law enforcement agencies (including the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) deployment) and Eskom improvement in the prevention, monitoring and detection strategies across the Generation business.”

By the end of last year, only one insider had been arrested for his suspected involvement in such an incident over the past two years.

However, the number of arrests made in relation to Eskom sabotage has increased notably this year. 

On 26 June 2024, the Mthatha Specialised Commercial Crime Court convicted a contractor employee arrested for theft and possession of copper cable at Eskom’s Matla Power Station.

In light of this, Botse Sikhwitshi, the Acting General Manager for Security at Eskom, said Eskom strongly condemns these actions.

“This conviction contributes to the gradual improvement of our convictions, which have doubled in the financial year 23/24 compared to the financial year 22/23, increasing from 11 to 22 recorded convictions,” he said.

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane told Newzroom Afrika that the power utility is “playing catch-up” in some aspects of the fight against corruption.

He said Eskom is working on identifying opportunities for malfeasance and closing these gaps.

“A lot of work has been done internally over the last year in particular to understand the modus operandi,” Marokane said.

“I think we’re playing catch-up in some instances, but you’ll see improvements. For example, our coal-handling systems are completely revamped.”

Much of Eskom’s recent illicit activity involves coal and parts supply. Marokane indicated that the power utility is improving controls in these areas of the generation business.

“We’re going to use a lot of technology to ensure that we get what we pay for and that we can cut out any opportunity for intervention between the source and the power stations,” he said.

This includes Internet of Things technology from Vodacom’s IoT.nxt to help secure its coal supply chain, Eskom’s chair Mteto Nyati recently revealed. 

IoT.nxt’s system tracks coal’s movement from the mine to the Eskom power station, detecting deviations from the planned routes and related problems.

“By the end of the year, the new coal automation system will be implemented at all Eskom’s power stations,” Marokane said.

“That should eliminate the problems associated with criminal elements stealing coal and delivering poor coal instead.”

On 8 July 2024, Eskom announced that an employee and a service provider, who is an accomplice, made separate appearances before the Hendrina Magistrate Court on 1 and 5 July. 

“They were each granted bail of R30,000 after being charged for a crime committed at Hendrina Power Station the previous year,” Eskom said.

“Between January 2023 and April 2023, the service provider supplied five valve stems to Hendrina Power Station which were stolen from the same power station warehouse, as a result of working with the Eskom employee.”

“An internal investigation revealed that the Eskom employee had misused company resources without authorisation for their own personal gain and also falsified documents as the end-user.”

Eskom suffered a financial loss of R667,500 because of this criminal activity.

This conviction comes as part of a string of recent arrests and convictions made by the authorities.