Changing nearly half of the power station managers and appointing the right person to lead Eskom's generation business have been key drivers in the power utility's ability to stave off load shedding for more than 140 days, Eskom board chairperson Mteto Nyati has said.
Nyati didn't actively seek to join the troubled power utility nearly two years ago, instead it chose him - or rather, President Cyril Ramaphosa did.
"It came to me, uninvited … now it is occupying my life," he told Foord chief investment officer Nick Balkin during an interview that was part of a webinar series the asset management company broadcast on Tuesday.
Nyati, the former CEO of MTN SA and Altron, recalled how, late in 2022, Ramaphosa cut short a trip to the UK to tend to the energy crisis, which at that point saw South Africans battling with Stage 6 load shedding.
Nyati shared how after returning to South Africa, the very next day, the president gave him a call, requesting that they meet.
Nyati, who has a mechanical engineering background and experience in turnarounds, figured that he would probably be asked to get involved with Eskom.
"Indeed, that is what he [Ramaphosa] wanted. In fact, he wanted me to be CEO of Eskom," he said. But Nyati had no intention of displacing André de Ruyter, who was CEO at the time. Nyati believed De Ruyter to be a "good leader" who just needed a board that would support him.
