DA rejects COSATU’s anti-worker Eskom bailout plan

29 January 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) rejects outright a proposed plan by COSATU to ask the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to avail R254 billion to clear half of Eskom’s debt. We will therefore write to the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, and the acting PIC CEO, Vuyani Hako, challenging them to publicly reject the COSATU proposal, which would result in billions of Rands in state employee pension funds being redirected to bail out a collapsing and defunct Eskom.

COSATU’s purported conditions of this bailout proposal are that Eskom should not be privatised, no jobs should be lost and that the state should take a lead on renewable energy.

It is deeply misleading for COSATU to claim to fight for the rights of workers when in essence it is proposing to use workers' money to bail out the ANC and reward its mismanagement of SOEs.

Workers should not be asked to shoulder a sinking Eskom ship that was looted by political elites and their proxies during the heydays of state capture.

The DA is on record stating that pension funds in the PIC should never be used to bailout failing SOEs. Minister Mboweni has an obligation to rise above tripartite alliance politics to stop the ANC from using the PIC as a piggy bank to subsidise state corruption.

There is no saving Eskom. If the PIC approves this R254 billion bailout to Eskom, state employee pensioners should consider it as a donation, as the money will never be recovered. Eskom has proved time and again that it is unable to pay its debts and has to rely on state bailouts to stay afloat.

Issued by Geordin Hill Lewis, DA Shadow Minister of Finance, 29 January 2020