Thread by @JacaNews

We are back at the #StateCaptureInquiry today's witness is #Eskom board chairperson Jabu Mabuza. He is represented by Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi

#StateCaptureInquiry Evidence Leader, Advocate Vincent Maleka and DCJ Raymond Zondo are now dealing with housekeeping matters and documents.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka tells Zondo the legal team has prepared a bundle of notices for individuals who will be implicated in Mabuza's testimony #Eskom

#StateCaptureInquiry Anoj Singh, Abram Masango and Matshela Koko are among those who are implicated by Mabuza and notices have been sent to them. Maleka says for now the legal team has no responses from them.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka takes Zondo through a bundle of documents from Eskom which document the disciplinary hearing and charges against Koko including his response.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka says the commission wanted to know if Eskom is still doing business with Gupta owned Tegeta Mining, he says they were told Tegeta is under business rescue.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza has taken his oath. Maleka now asks him to go through his background

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he worked for the South African Breweries and was also the CEO of Tsogo Sun.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he has been the chairman of Eskom since 2012. He says yesterday Telkom announced he would step down as the chair of Telkom in May

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he is not aware of any attempt to capture Telkom.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says after the appointment of Sipho Maseko as the CEO of Eskom and the company going through many setbacks, it is has now been turned around and its in a good state.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the reason he is not aware of any attempt to capture Telkom is because the company has a strong board team which has allowed the company's executives to do their work.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka asks Mabuza about the investigation into Telkom's price fixing by the competition commission.

Mabuza: Telkom's dominant position at the time manifested in how it dealt with competitors.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Telkom was found guilty on a lot of factors and it paid various fines and has had to comply with certain prescripts from the Competition Commission. He says he can confirm that today Telkom is competition fairly

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza now moves to Eskom. He says in January 2018 while he was on his way to Davos, he got a call from the DG of finance that he should expect a call from either the President or former Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Brown then gave her call and told him they have appointed him as the Eskom board chairperson and they hope he will accept as this was already made public. He says he accepted.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Deputy Minister David Mabuza also informed him about the decision and that the entire Eskom board at the time had to go.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka wants to know about the conflicts of interest.

Mabuza: I knew when I was appointed that I was the chairperson of a company that owns a 3rd of Eskom's boilers. He owned Babcook and Honeywell through a company called Sphere

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he then prepared to resign from Sphere and declared his businesses when appointed as Eskom chair.

He says what perplexed him was how he got a letter telling him a board has been appointed and he was the captain. He says for Eskom he was informed

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says usually the board chairperson usually has a say in who becomes the other members of the board, but this did not happen with Eskom.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he accepted that he will won't have privacy after accepting his appointment of Eskom chair.

Maleka is going through his declaration of interests.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he bought 6% of Sphere for R26 million with his after tax money, he resigned after his appointment as Eskom chair.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka moves to Tegeta. He says according to Eskom Thabani Mashego will come and testify to that contract

#StateCaptureInquiry We are back from tea break. Maleka says they want to clarify something about Mabuza's date of appointment as Eskom chairperson. Mabuza said he was appointed on January 19.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka says his team has established that Mabuza was appointed on the same day that his appointment was announced publicly.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka is now on a report by Treasury which looked into several contracts including the Tegeta contract. He wants to know when Mabuza became aware of this report.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he got to know about the Treasury report in November 2018. Maleka wants to know if other board members were made aware of the report.

Mabuza says yah, and he says their mandate was to look at disciplinary proceedings that were not completed.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the disciplinary hearings the board had to complete were related to the Tegeta contract and coal supply for the Hendrina Power station.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka wants to know why the Treasury report was not given to the board as it was dealing with fixing up Eskom.

Mabuza says the board has not looked at the specific report but dealt with issues of coal supply.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka now reads from the report which says Eskom must investigate whether the process of the Tegeta agreement was unlawful. He wants to know if Mabuza's board would be willing to do this?

Mabuza says they would

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza also points out that the tabling of this report happened before his board was appointed.

Maleka says Mabuza's board is also responsible for executing the remedial actions of the report.

Mabuza says he accepts that

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he regrets the impression he created when he said the report precedes his board.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka says Treasury found that the pre-payment of Tegeta by Eskom was unlawful, he says the report also found that there was fruitless expenditure and the then CEO of Eskom should have accounted. He asks Mabuza if his board will look into this?

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says yes his board is already dealing with the issues related to the procurement of coal, he says they have exhausted their own disciplinary process, they have handed over to the Hawks for criminal prosecutions and will begin with civil lawsuit's

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza points out that the disciplinary process of former Eskom Executive Matshela Koko is related to the Tegeta contract and its unfortunate that he resigned before the disciplinary hearing.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he does not think the current board would have approved that a guarantee be paid to a supplier (Tegeta). He says it is incorrect to say has not suffered because of that guarantee.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza tells the commission Eskom did suffer financial losses due to the Tegeta guarantee, he does not have the numbers.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the illegal decisions were taken by people who are dually authorised. He says he hopes in the work of the commission there will be a recognition that some in SOE's are abusing their authority.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says when his board took over Eskom was going through a difficult financial situation, this was in January 2018. Eskom has been relying on funding as it has no money.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the funders had drawn a line-"We are not putting any more cent in Eskom under this leadership"

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says morale was low and people were not proud to be working for Eskom. He reflects on how this was a company that had a better credit rating than the country and was one of the top five in the world.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza the new board had to win the trust of funders, "they needed to know that this board would not steal their money". He says the board then sought out to raise more money and appoint a new executive.

#StateCaptureInquiry As Mabuza says-They call it corruption, but the game is procurement- Maleka stops him, says he knows he is passionate about that, they will get there, he wants to know numbers, how much debt was Eskom under at the time

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Eskom is on R50 billion of debt service costs. He says the government guarantees are for capital expenditure and operational costs not debt

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka now moves to George Sebulela who stepped down from the board and the resignation of former Eskom Director, Mark Lamberti

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Lamberti had to go because he was accused of mistreating a black woman. He says he accepted his resignation but remains hurt by what happened.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza seems to feel sorry for Lamberti, says he knows how the allegations against him affected him as a person.

#StateCaptureInquiry We adjourn for lunch. Proceedings will continue at 2pm.

#StateCaptureInquiry We are back from lunch, Mabuza now explains the circumstances around the resignation of George Sibulela from the board.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Sibulela resigned due to a conflict of interest. He says he did not disclose his relation to an IT tender.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Sibulela denied being related to a bidder who had disclosed the relation. He says Mabuza was involved in a process he was not supposed to be part of

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the media pickup on the Sibulela issue and he recommended he resigns for the sake of good governance. Sibulela eventually resigned.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka says they are now moving to the 'Meat' of Mabuza's statement. He asks him to explain what he meant when he said "Corruption is the name, procurement is the game"

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he simply means that what is corruption happens in the procurement of goods and services in the public sector.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says he has made it his business to disband the board's tender adjudication committee at Eskom as non executives members cannot be part of day to day processes of the company

#StateCaptureInquiry We are now on former Eskom CEO, Sean Maritz who resigned in March 2018. He was facing charges related to his approving a payment to a Hong Kong company after Eskom secured a R25-billion loan from the Chinese company Huarong Energy Africa.

#StateCaptureInquiry Other charges against Maritz include are related to a letter he allegedly wrote to McKinsey & Company absolving it from paying back R 1.6-billion‚ unlawfully paid to it and Trillian.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza tells Zondo, Maritz was the first person the new board charged and suspended.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says while Maritz disclosed everything to him and Phakamani Hadebe, he somehow did not disclose anything about the Huarong deal.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says when Maritz was confronted, he said he has not signed the deal.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says Eskom has received a list of demands from Haurong which they have indicated they will not honour as they don't owe them anything. He says their chairman in China wants to have coffee with him-"I said no, there is no coffee that will be had"

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says their focus is also to get back the money owed to Eskom, they were able to bag the R1 million from Mckinsey and company. He says they are in the process of getting R600 million from Trillion

#StateCaptureInquiry We now move to the charges against Koko and others. Mabuza says he met Maritz and Thabani Masango who has been reinstated at Eskom-the rest he has not met

#StateCaptureInquiry Correction: Its R1.1 billion that Mabuza says Eskom has got back from McKinsey

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza tells Zondo the first disciplinary process Koko underwent was 'a sham' he says the new board added additional charges and handed those over to him and his legal team.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza now reads the letter containing the charges against Koko. The 1st one says he breached his the powers of his position. -He distributed from his Eskom and his personal account highly confidential documents to a third party.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says former head of legal, Suzzane Daniels was charged with the same thing.

#StateCaptureInquiry The letter Mabuza is reading states that the email ([e-mail]) the documents were sent to Gupta linked business man Salim Essa.

#StateCaptureInquiry The documents allegedly sent include policies of appointing consultants, and the list of top engineers.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza reads that there is an email sent to Essa which is titled #loadshedding review and way forward.

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says #loadshedding concerns the board. He says the previous leadership of Eskom has used half of the money it has on maintaining infrastructure

#StateCaptureInquiry Mabuza says the President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a task team and there are various people coming on board to help.

#StateCaptureInquiry Maleka tells Zondo it is already 4pm. Zondo says that he has indicated before that the commission needs to start early or finish later than normal. He says on Monday they should start early. Maleka says he thinks they should start early on Monday

#StateCaptureInquiry Zondo asks Mabuza if he is okay to start at 9am or 9:30am on Monday. Mabuza says he willing to go for another hour and he is happy to start early on Monday.

#StateCaptureInquiry Zondo says we will adjourn and start at 9am on Monday.