• Eskom group chief executive Andre de Ruyter will no longer need to serve out his notice period.
• The chief executive was expected to serve at the utility until 31st March but a special board meeting waived this period and allowed the CEO to leave immediately.
• The decision comes after an explosive interview in which De Ruyter highlighted pervasive corruption at a senior government level.

Despite having a notice period that extended to 31st March 2023, Eskom group chief executive Andre de Ruyter has been let go early.

During a special board meeting convened on Wednesday evening, a mutual agreement was reached to curtail De Ruyter’s notice period to 28th February. However, the board also resolved that the outgoing group chief executive would be released from his position with immediate effect.

There is no word on an acting group chief executive as of time of writing meaning that Eskom is, as of right now, without a leader.

The timing of this decision coincides with the release of a nearly hour-long interview with e.tv’s Annika Larsen. In this interview, De Ruyter made shocking allegations of corruption at a senior government level.

“I expressed my concern to a senior government minister about attempts, in my view, to water down governance around the $8.5bn that, by and large, due to Eskom’s intervention, we got at COP26, and the response was essentially that you must be pragmatic. In order to pursue the greater good, you have to enable some people to eat a little bit,” De Ruyter told Larsen.

You can watch the full interview online here and we highly recommend setting aside an hour just for that.

This interview drew the ire of Minister of Public Enterprise, Pravin Gordhan. The minister said that chief execs at entities such as Eskom shouldn’t be involved in “open political debates or assertions” according to a report from Business Day.

This announcement couldn’t come at a worse time considering that Eskom only published a job listing for the chief executive position at the start of February.

South Africa is well in the grip of Stage 6 loadshedding since Sunday and there has been no sign of any sort of reprieve on the horizon. In fact, reports suggest that the problem will only get worse, a matter De Ruyter refuted earlier this week.

“I can give the country the assurance that we’re doing everything in our power to ensure that we do not end up in a situation where we go beyond that [stage 6]. But, of course, the system has an inherent lack of reliability and that gives us the need to plan for these unforeseen events,” De Ruyter said as per a report from EWN.