Eskom board member Busisiwe Mavuso complained to MPs this week how unions threatened that any attempt by the power utility to freeze salaries would be regarded as ‘a declaration of war’.
Mavuso suggested that labour should not continue to ‘sit there as principals with a red pen’, or think they had no role to play in saving Eskom.
She made these remarks in evidence to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations. She also complained of the intense political pressure placed on the Eskom board over the past year to keep the lights on irrespective of the cost.
On the wage issue, Mavuso said: ‘We made this decision as this board last year to say that we are going to give 0% increase because we realised the dire situation of Eskom. It was labour that said, “If you dare do that, it’s going to be a declaration of war”.
‘Immediately the first episode of load-shedding occurred. We were quickly given an instruction that we were going to have to rethink our decision and revise the 0%. But you are sitting with this developmental state mandate – and I don’t know if we actually can continue in that trajectory.’
Mavuso said Eskom had 15 000 staff too many. This was unjustifiable, yet labour threatened war whenever the issue was raised. This was part of the honest conversation the country needed to have about Eskom.
‘We shouldn’t be skirting around the issue when we talk about the issues of Eskom,’ she said.