Crossing the line? ANC wins Eskom tender

[duncan drennan]

The ANC has a funding company, Chancellor House. Chancellor house owns 25% of Hitachi Power Africa. Hitachi Power Africa just won a R20-billion (with a b) contract to supply Eskom with steam generators for the Medupi power station. Eskom is 100% state owned and effectively answers to Alec Erwin.

Some interesting quotes,

Chancellor House has a R3-billion stake in the contract. This may double as Eskom considers extending the order to a second new power station.

The contract award, after a tender process marked by delays, price escalations and a lack of serious competition, highlights the problem of the ruling party being both player and referee: it benefits from contracts emanating from the government it runs.

The Mail & Guardian and the Institute of Security Studies corruption and governance programme last November exposed Chancellor House, named after the downtown Johannesburg building where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo once ran their law practice, as a “business front set up by the ANC to make profit on its behalf�.
________

hancellor House was set up in 2003 and is wholly owned by the Chancellor House Trust, whose sole aim, although this is not recorded in the formal trust deed, is to fund the ANC.

The trustees, according to the deed, are former North West premier Popo Molefe and Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane*, a prominent businesswoman.

Their positions reveal an apparent conflict of interest apart from the ANC’s role: Dakile-Hlongwane is listed as a director of Eskom Enterprises and Molefe is a close business partner of Valli Moosa, the former environment minister who chairs Eskom. Molefe and Moosa founded and co-own leading empowerment vehicle Lereko Investments. Eskom did not respond to this at the time of going to press.

Full article on M&G Online

There are two big players, namely Alstrom and Hitachi (who won different parts of the contract), and the ANC owns a large percentage of one of them? There are definite questions that need to be asked and addressed. Further from the article,

ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe confirmed in a later interview with the Financial Mail’s Carol Paton that the company was an “ANC vehicle� whose sole purpose was to fund the ruling party.

Paton’s notes reflect Motlanthe also saying: “The ANC can have an investment vehicle -- but it must do business out[side] of government procurement, even outside of South Africa, so there’s no conflict of interest.�

They are clearly going against there own words.

• Should the ANC be allowed to (indirectly) make these sort of investments?
• How do these money making endeavours assist the party to stay in power?
• Does this dilute democracy (which I suppose is about marketing in a lot of ways, and marketing requires a budget)?
• How can this be regulated?
• Who regulates this in a government with an overwhelming ANC majority?

[Dave A]

This part is interesting.

Eskom failed to answer detailed questions this week, but said it took “every precaution to ensure that the adjudication process was thorough and defendable�. Erwin did not reply to questions.

And then they fail to answer the questions

[SilverNodashi]

My question would be, how much of this money would really go into the project & how effective would the backup power supplies really be. As it is, Eskom hasn't spend the money that we as consumer have paid them to upgrade their equipment. Now we're being billed more, in order to upgrade their out of date equipment

[duncan drennan]

Eskom is spending about R79 billion to build the Medupi power station which will deliver up to 4788MW.

[Dave A]

I recall some time back chatting to a fella who was setting up business in Mozambique. He was telling me that you had to give a political bigwig a shareholding if you wanted to get anywhere as a businessman there.

At the time I thought "How absolutely corrupt"
But I guess we're just down the road, really.

[World_Of_Elites]

The ANC has a funding company, Chancellor House. Chancellor house owns 25% of Hitachi Power Africa. Hitachi Power Africa just won a R20-billion (with a b) contract to supply Eskom with steam generators for the Medupi power station. Eskom is 100% state owned and effectively answers to Alec Erwin.

Some interesting quotes,



There are two big players, namely Alstrom and Hitachi (who won different parts of the contract), and the ANC owns a large percentage of one of them? There are definite questions that need to be asked and addressed. Further from the article,



They are clearly going against there own words.

• Should the ANC be allowed to (indirectly) make these sort of investments?
• How do these money making endeavours assist the party to stay in power?
• Does this dilute democracy (which I suppose is about marketing in a lot of ways, and marketing requires a budget)?
• How can this be regulated?
• Who regulates this in a government with an overwhelming ANC majority?

Now it all belongs to Zuma