By Mapaballo Borotho
- President Cyril Ramaphosa praised Eskom’s recovery from state capture during a visit to Kusile Power Station, now fully operational.
- He highlighted corruption at senior levels as a major cause of past failures but commended current leadership for the turnaround.
- Ramaphosa also denied involvement in details of the IPID report into the Phala Phala theft scandal.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has praised Eskom for its recovery from the effects of state capture.
The president was speaking at an event at Kusile Power Station on Friday, 10 April 2026, where Eskom marked the completion of its build programme.
The power station, commissioned in 2007 with an initial budget of R80 billion, has since seen costs double.
In 2024, Eskom completed the station, bringing all six generating units online and adding 4,800 megawatts of capacity to the national grid.
Following a tour of the site, Ramaphosa congratulated Eskom’s leadership for turning around what he described as a jewel of South Africa’s energy infrastructure.
“People at the top level of this organisation were involved in acts of corruption and siphoning money, ensuring that our power stations did not function,” said Ramaphosa.
“It looked bleak and almost impossible to recover from the devastation they caused, but I knew that when we appointed these colleagues, we would be able to recover.”
Meanwhile, responding to the Phala Phala farm theft scandal, Ramaphosa said he had nothing to do with details contained in a 2023 Independent Police Investigative Directorate report on the matter.
The report, published by ActionSA on Friday, alleges that the head of the Presidential Protection Unit, Major-General Wally Rhoode, concealed unauthorised high-level investigations into the 2020 theft incident.
At least $580,000 was reportedly stolen from beneath a couch at the president’s game farm in Limpopo.
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