Why I Walk Out Of Scopa Meeting – Busisiwe Mavuso Defends Her Decision

Eskom’s board member Busisiwe Mavuso said if the decision to walk out of a Scopa meeting last week was ‘politics of the gutter’, as was uttered by the committee, then she wore it as a badge of honour.

Mavuso walked out of the meeting into the state of affairs at the ailing utility after being involved in a heated exchange with Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa.

This followed remarks by Mavuso that Eskom’s board and its CEO Andre De Ruyter would not be made the scapegoat for the utility’s historic problems, which she blames on the ANC-led government.

This prompted Hlengwa to reprimand Mavuso, saying the meeting was not for partisan politics before he told the Eskom member to ‘behave’.

“Does behave mean answer the way I expect you to? I had better like the answer that you are going to give or else? If that conduct of walking out is politics of the gutter as he put it, then I wear politics of the gutter as a badge of honour,” said Mavuso on Monday.

Hlengwa, meanwhile, said that the ANC being to blame for the troubling state of Eskom was not in dispute.

However, Scopa sought answers from the board on Eskom’s failure to implement 14 of the 23 recommendations it had made, adding that they cannot get around being answerable to the committee.

“She speaks about Kusile being completed in 2023 and that was the commitment they made in 2019. But in this oversight visit, they have moved that to 2024. So, maybe you can see why the committee is not happy, Eskom is not performing and is not delivering on its core mandate, which is to supply electricity to the grid,” said Hlengwa.