Calling Eskom a mess is actually being rather kind.

The last time we heard from energy expert Ted Blom, he said that the SOE was “already dead in the morgue”.

There are many, many reasons for the woeful state of affairs, and you would imagine that being the CEO brings with a great deal of stress.

Just recently, Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe announced that he would step down at the end of July, citing health reasons, in a move that will only cause greater instability at the floundering organisation.

According to MyBroadband, it’s indicative of a problem that has brought Eskom to its knees:

While Hadebe’s departure took many people by surprise, it is not unexpected when looking at Eskom’s track record over the past decade.

Eskom has been struggling to hold onto CEOs since former President Jacob Zuma took office and has been dogged with mismanagement and corruption over the last decade.

Between 1985 and 2007 (22 years) Eskom only had 3 CEOs – Ian McRae (1985–1994), Allen Morgan (1994-2000), and Thulani Gcabashe (2000-2007).

The power utility was financially stable during this period and the term load-shedding did not exist in South Africa

Well, that was all pre-Zuma, of course, but the high turnover of CEOs since then paints an ugly picture.

When you look at it like this, it’s no wonder there’s a leadership crisis:

If you’re trying to keep count, that’s 11 different CEOs, interim CEOs, and acting CEOs in a decade, with Brian Molefe taking the reins twice, despite his gross incompetence and fake tears.

One of the saddest remnants of the Zuma tenure remains the number of good, honest public servants whose skillsets are now forever lost. At one stage, SARS was lauded around the world, but as the competent were picked off, and replaced with lackeys that would enable our leader’s illicit bidding, it fell apart.

Over and over, right across many of our SOEs and government institutions, this remains the case, and we’ll be paying the price for years to come.

[source:mybroadband]