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JEREMY MAGGS: Let’s start with this. Last week, you might recall, the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said crime, corruption and sabotage were all a big problem at Eskom. A similar view, you’ll recall, was also expressed by the former chief executive, Andre de Ruyter. On Sunday (4 June), the City Press newspaper reported that a high-ranking Eskom executive is linked to sabotage at power stations. Forensic investigator Calvin Rafadi says Eskom managers and employees have been involved in sabotage at power stations for years. So a warm welcome to the programme, just how entrenched is the problem?
CALVIN RAFADI: It is very rife and [for one] to come and do the sabotage in the power station, at the national key point, obviously you need the help of some of the employees and managers. What I can say, even from the previous ministers, they’ve alluded to this, that people who break the power station, they know it from the back of their head. Meaning even just from the sound of the unit, they can tell you that a particular screw needs to be fixed or it needs to be oiled or a particular component is lacking thereof.
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JEREMY MAGGS: What exactly are they doing when they’re sabotaging the stations?
CALVIN RAFADI: Alright, in the power stations, we’ve got what we call the C and I maintenance, so it’s control and instrument. So you get your boilers, then your turbines, but what basically happens is these boilers and turbines, they’re interchanged but you’ll find they get somebody for a different, as a contractor to service the boilers and a different contractor for the turbines.
So in essence, some of these people, when they do the maintenance, they even sabotage the other or they will then maybe if you get a missed call, you as Jeremy are servicing the boilers, you get a call and just a missed call at night and then you are not called in. The guy who was servicing the turbines can equally jump in and [get into] your components.
But in essence, everything is procurement driven as far as to the point where now who must supply the coal, who must handle the security issues.
One can say some of the rotten employees, some of the rotten, I repeat some, from Rotek, they are the ones who are called in to come and maintain and do the maintenance in the power station. Then in the interim, what they do is they break some of these components knowing that they are the ones who must now influence and adjudicate who must supply those components.
Whilst even supplying them, because the policy of Eskom, they must in their storage keep three of each component of each unit. Then they finish up all three, breaking the other and so forth and so on. At the end of the day, they manufacture some of these parts themselves or they buy not even original equipment, manufacture, one can call it fong kong parts and then they tend not to last and cause fatigue on some of these units.
Read: Eskom won’t buy spares to fix units, says union official
JEREMY MAGGS: How difficult has it been to investigate?
CALVIN RAFADI: Well, we had the privilege in 2019, if you recall the time when the president made the first u-turn from one international trip, I was called in on a request for a quote and then to follow up on matters at Tutuka, the troublesome Tutuka power station, of which every week they report to their nearest police station, they register so many cases of sabotage, copper theft and all those, you name it on various sabotages. So basically, you’ll never find any artisan or engineer, it is very difficult to find them red-handed breaking.
But what we have done to follow up on all those things, I called all of them, I said you are in possession of all the company computers, so I’m mandated, and this is what I’m going to do as a forensic practitioner, I’m going to download all your computers. But I told them prior, five days before I went back to download, because I knew some of them, they’ll go home and delete.
So we used some technicians, who retrieved most of the deleted stuff and that’s where now we manage to see some having contracts which are on Word version, giving them to their friends so that they can come and do the servicing at Eskom.
Some were managers requesting three quotes from other companies to come and supply some components, of which they’re not allowed to, and then they give it to their friends.
So in essence, we managed to see a lot of how the modus operandi operates because that’s why at the end of the day we say this thing is procurement driven. Even when we can have so many soldiers on the premises of these national key points, they’ll do nothing but just be visible guarding there and the rot happens in the procurement.
JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think it is so entrenched, so far up and down the value chain that it’s almost impossible to stop now?
CALVIN RAFADI: Well, it is not impossible, but one can say if there’s a political will and if there’s the will from the security cluster of Eskom. That’s why I’ve always been saying that Eskom doesn’t have good security and now we can see some of the issues are coming out that they favour some companies and not [others].
I’ve always been saying that even at the forensic level, most people, even when they report corruption it goes nowhere. Some people are pulled into this particular investigation, some are not, they are just swept under the carpet. So what I’m saying, in essence, is they’re protecting one another. But if that will stop, because the reason why they protect one another is because they owe one another favours or they are chowing on the other side. So if that can also be monitored and there’s a watchdog in that, then we will see justice in this particular business called Eskom.
JEREMY MAGGS: Calvin Rafadi, thank you very much.
