The Hatchet Team for Taking Eskom Down

The Hatchet Team for Taking Eskom Down

by PD Lawton

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently appointed 8 members of a `sustainability task team` to assess the needs of Eskom. They are:

Anton Eberhard, Brian Dames, Tsakani Mthombeni, Sy Gourrah, Grové Steyn, Frans Baleni, Mick Davis and Busisiwe Vilakazi

As of 19 December, Brian Dames has resigned, for reasons unknown.

This team reflects a blatant take-over of South Africa`s state-owned energy supplier, in preparation for privatization. Its appointment makes it shockingly obvious that the City of London`s intent is to decimate the industrial capability (apart from the needs of the mines) of yet another BRICS member.

Out of the 8 members, 4 are connected to AngloAmerican which has been London and Wall Street`s vehicle for the looting of Africa`s mineral wealth since the time of Cecil Rhodes.

Out of the 8 members, 5 are prominent proponents of renewable energy and strongly anti- nuclear. If Eskom goes green, the future of South Africa will be worse than bleak.

One of the most shocking appointments to this team is Mick Davis, an individual whose career is so inter-laced with the City of London and its extractive investments, that he is now Chief Treasurer of the UK`s Conservative Party!

Mick Davis, Sir Michael Lawrence Davis , has been the CEO of London`s Xstrata and served on the boards of Glencore and BHP Billiton.

Brian Dames is the CEO of African Rainbow Energy and Power, owned by Patrice Motsepe, owner of African Rainbow Minerals which was created by AngloAmerican to provide the industry with a black face. Self-made millionaire and mining entrepreneur, Gayton Mackenzie , has described the Black Empowerment scheme as a self-enriching network designed to keep control of the industry.

Brian Dames, works from within BRICS as the co-chair of the BRICS Business Council’s Energy and Green Economy Working Group, to push for the de-carbonization of BRICS economies, for their energy sectors to turn to renewables.

He said, “The move towards renewable energy will impact politics within many countries, particularly BRICS member states, as the need for skills and labour shift.”

Tsakani Mthombeni works for Goldfields, one the largest gold mining corporation globally, related to Glencore. He is the co-author of “Here Comes the Sun: How Mines can Utilise Renewable Energy, a presentation for Goldfields in 2016 which proclaims the need for: “supporting the transition to a low carbon economy through efficiency and low carbon technology”.

Tsakani Mthombeni is Chairman of EIUG( Energy Intensive Users Group of South Africa). This organization states: “The EIUG seeks to influence the shape of the energy industry to ensure that reasonable and economically sound solutions are developed. The country must transition to a lower-carbon future”.

Sy Gourrah is General Manager of ACTOM Power Systems which is the largest manufacturer and distributor of electro-mechanical equipment in Africa. Originally founded to service the mines at the turn of the last century this company is connected to such names as Metropolitan Vickers ( Metvick), Barlow Rand and General Electric (GEC)

Frans Baleni is the past General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. Earlier in 2018 at the Mining Indaba, he called for the New Mining Charter to be scrapped. The Zuma administration`s New Mining Charter of 2017 would have been historic and the first time in history that South Africa`s mineral wealth was used to the benefit of the nation.

Busisiwe Vilakazi received a Nelson Mandela Scholarship from the University of Oxford in the UK. The scholarship is a Unilever initiative, also funded by London`s auditing firm Deloitte.

Anton Eberhard is Professor and Senior Scholar at the University of Cape Town and a champion of renewable energy. He opposes nuclear energy with incompetent arguments.

As a leading South African economist, Grové Steyn compiled a report in 2014 which contributed to the scrapping of the Zuma administration`s proposal for the expansion of the nuclear industry. Steyn appears to be connected to a Tavistock Institute type of thought police called Common Purpose which is a British charity that masquerades under leadership training. Steyn is a champion of Wind Energy. He has called for the wind energy sector to be government subsidized.

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