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The Acting Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, Daphne Rantho, has this morning agreed to the DA’s request that Minister of Public Enterprises, Lynne Brown, and the Eskom Board be hauled before the Committee to account for the Molefe fiasco as well as the disastrous state of Eskom.

Minister Brown and the Board will be called to Parliament on Friday, 19 May 2017, for an extraordinary sitting.

At this meeting, the DA will push for a firm commitment that a full-scale parliamentary inquiry be instituted urgently. We will directly request Minister Lynne Brown, and the Eskom Board to voluntarily submit to a full-scale Parliamentary inquiry, as it is the only mechanism that can truly hold Eskom to account and uncover how Brian Molefe came to be returned to Eskom.

The DA do not believe that Minister Brown or Eskom Board Chair Ben Ngubane can leave Parliament on Friday without agreeing to a such a full-scale investigation.

The DA will also directly call on the ANC members of the committee to support us in this call. The ANC has in recent days made much of their opposition to Molefe’s return to Eskom, yet hypocritically it is the very ANC policy of cadre deployment and cadre re-deployment that has resulted in this fiasco.

If the ANC is serious about opposing what is going on at Eskom it will support our call for a Parliamentary inquiry.

This is vital so that we can, once and for all, get to the bottom of the cause of the rot that has set in at Eskom.

The trickle of allegations of corruption and capture emanating from Eskom has now turned into a waterfall that simply beggars belief.

South Africans face corruption scandals on a daily basis. It is time for Parliament to perform its oversight role and fully investigate the shocking allegations and to ensure that those who are implicated, directly or indirectly are faced with the full might of the law.

Issued by DA