• Eskom has appointed a new chairperson of the board in tech executive veteran Mteto Nyati.
• Previous chairperson and non-executive director Mpho Makwana is departing the utility after reports of butting heads with Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan.
• The pair allegedly have been disagreeing on who the utility will get to replace former CEO Andre de Ruyter.

Despite recent improvements to generation capacity, South Africa’s power utility Eskom is still struggling for executive stability after the departure of former CEO Andre de Ruyter earlier in the year. The latest from the utility sees the chairperson of Eskom’s board of directors depart the energy producer as of Monday evening.

This is according to an announcement from Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, who has declared Eskom Chairperson Mpho Makwana has stepped down and will leave the utility and his post as non-executive director at the end of October.

Gordhan says that Makwana departs amicably, and will continue to serve at his post until the end of October when his replacement Mteto Nyati will take over as non-executive director and chairperson of the Eskom board.

“I am grateful for the opportunity afforded to me by the Government of the Republic of South Africa to serve a second term as Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Eskom,” said Makwana. “I wish Eskom and its people success and thank its committed stewards for their unstinting efforts to revive the utility.”

Despite assertions that the departure was amicable, News24 reports that the relationship between Gordhan and Makwana had soured in recent months. The pair would come to heads on the choice of a new chief executive officer for Eskom, which is still being run by interim executive Calib Cassim.

There is societal pressure to find a full-time leader for the Eskom ship, steadily taking on water amid a historic energy crisis. Despite months of searching, there still seems to not be any clear leaders in the race for the top gig at the utility. Gordhan did tell Eskom last month to not rule out appointing an individual older than 60 years old after discovering that the board was ignoring older candidates.

“Our efforts to stabilize Eskom and restructure it into three subsidiaries – generation, transmission and distribution remain on track,” said the minister in a recent announcement.

“As government we are committed to ensuring that Eskom has the right skills, talent and experience to support our pursuit of a more secure energy future for South Africans.”

Incoming chairperson Mteto Nyati must now corroborate with Gordhan on the choice of CEO. An accomplished businessman, Nyato has 25 years of experience leading major tech corporations, and served as CEO of MTN South Africa, Altron and was the managing director for Microsoft South Africa.

He has a tough task ahead of him, as loadshedding continues to plague the utility, now nearing the end of the year with the most power outages ever. Improved power generation has been a bright development at the utility in recent weeks, as the return of Kusile power station has reduced outages, for now.

[Image – CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA on Flickr]