South Africa's power utility in crisis after race row

Nov 10, 2009, 9:56 GMT

Johannesburg - South Africa's state power utility, Eskom, was in crisis Tuesday after the company's chairman resigned following a leadership struggle that sparked a race row.

'What is happening at Eskom constitutes a crisis,' a frustrated Gwede Mantashe, secretary-general of the ANC, admitted a day after Eskom's chairman Bobby Godsell quit just as the company tries to address chronic power shortages.

Godsell quit days after being labelled a racist over the reported resignation of the company's black chief executive, Jacob Maroga.

Maroga was reported to have resigned to the Eskom board but Maroga later said he did not really resign and insists he is still CEO.

The nationalist ANC Youth League and the Black Management Forum immediately accused Godsell of trying to force out Maroga because of his skin colour. The BMF described state enterprises as 'slaughterhouses' for black executives.

But Mantashe on Tuesday insisted that the ANC knew the racism claim against Godsell to be 'far from the truth'.

Mantashe also lashed out at the Youth League and BMF for 'talking about Maroga purely in terms of his blackness.'

The crisis comes as Eskom and the government tries to muster support among the public for a whopping 135 per cent increase in electricity charges over the next three years.

Eskom is looking to hike tariffs to pay for a massive capital expansion programme to alleviate crippling power shortages that shut the country's gold mines for several days last year.