Dear Sir – I recall that, in 1940, the British army had been defeated in France by the invading German army. The army retreated to Dunkirk, a French channel port.

About 330 000 soldiers were picked up on the beaches and taken back to England. The last was taken off on June 4, 1940. Twenty-four days earlier, Winston Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister and, following Dunkirk, Lord Halifax and others wanted Churchill to cut a deal with the Germans. Churchill refused to do so. Mr De Ruyter, you are now in a similar position. People are trying to make you do wrong things. Gross incompetence of the South African government, of various Cabinet Ministers, of senior Eskom staff, of Eskom staff in general, of coal suppliers and of contractors, coupled with extreme corrupt behaviour, has brought Eskom to a point where it is a challenge to operate the interconnected power system. We live in a lunatic world: Eskom’s Solly Tshitangano, the procurement officer, has been charged by Eskom with “failing to investigate alleged overcharging and corrupt practices by Econ” (Econ is a fuel supplier). A quick review of the storage facilities of Econ makes one wonder how they could supply fuel worth billions to Eskom. It is prudent for this to be investigated. Instead, you are labelled a racist.

Mr De Ruyter, there are a number of self-appointed ‘energy specialists’ who raise the subject of Eskom with metronomic regularity. They refer to power stations which ‘spew’ polluting gases and to Eskom’s “ageing fossil fuel fleet” and to “ongoing maintenance issues”. They say that renewable energy is cheap and ‘dispatchable’ and question why the South African government has not committed to many renewable-energy projects so that this country can finally be weaned off its dependence on fossil fuels. They warn against using nuclear power. They point fingers at Eskom and suggest that it is failing in its task. In fact, none of these ‘energy specialists’ has ever supervised the operations of an interconnected power system. Few have ever visited the site of a working coal-fired power station. Most have no clue about how many countries actually rely on nuclear power.

Mr De Ruyter, you are doing a darn fine job. From the time you took over, we have had a CEO and a COO who actually are getting the power system back to the levels of reliability it once enjoyed. We no longer have Eskom CEOs whose first action on taking office was to award large service contracts to members of their families and politically connected acquaintances. We no longer have Eskom senior staff who are grossly unsuited to the job at hand. Yes, we do have load-shedding, but at least it is no longer due to incompetence and sabotage as much as it was before.

I do realise that there is still some way to go. From my point of view, I cannot see how we are to integrate the many wind farms that are proposed throughout this country. Apart from the fact that wind turbines are visually disturbing, kill birds and bats and have an intermittent power output, if, at some stage, they are supplying some large degree of the domestic load then, when the wind dies (as it will), there are going to be some interesting power system stability problems. Eskom will be blamed. The biggest challenge will be to explain to government Ministers what the problem is. I am glad I won’t have to do that.

Mr De Ruyter, in the words of Kate Bush: Don’t Give Up. You are doing a cracking job. It is probably one of the biggest challenges any manager has faced since Jan Smith took over as Escom chairperson and had to fight to build new power stations. One thinks of Ian McRae, who battled to bring “electricity to all”.

It may not be publicly apparent but those who actually know something about running and building power systems agree that you are doing a great job. Please, keep it up.