Mpumalanga billionaire pastor and coal baron Joe Singh obtained a court order against Eskom for more than R2 billion in a recent court victory in favour of Singh’s Fentonia Colliery.
Justice Lindiwe Dorothy Vukeya of the High Court in Middelburg granted a default order against Eskom to fulfil a coal supply contract it had with Fentonia Colliery, owned by the Middelburg-based Joe Singh Group, according to the City Press.
The cited respondents were Eskom, Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan, his acting director general Kgathatso Tlhakudi and the Commission for Intellectual Property and Companies.
This order adds to Eskom’s gigantic financial woes. Efforts are ongoing to seek external sources of funding to rescue Eskom from collapse, including a highly contested proposal to tap into government workers’ pension funds. Exploiting private pension funds is now being talked about publicly.
Singh has been dogged by controversy because of his business deals with Eskom. In 2017, he made a R500 000 donation to the ANC Youth League in 2017 in return for a ‘political solution’ to his mining company Just Coal’s contractual problems with Eskom.
Judge Vukeya ruled that Eskom had to honour the terms of negotiations concluded between Eskom and Fentonia in March 2015 – which had stalled, leading to a court battle following a contractual dispute over allegations that the quality of the coal supplied was substandard.
Under the agreement, Fentonia was to supply 10 380 000 kilotons of coal to Eskom, with an initial monthly tonnage of 60 000 kilotons from 1 May 2015 to 31 March 2016, and thereafter increase the supply to a total tonnage of 115 000 kilotons.
Mining Weekly reported that, according to the Joe Singh Group, the senior public prosecutor had declined to prosecute subsidiary Just Coal over the quality of coal supplied, because of ‘insufficient evidence’. Eskom also demanded R6.5 billion from Just Coal in damages.