Johnathan Paoli
The Middelburg Regional Court on Tuesday struck from the roll the case against former Eskom boss, Matshela Koko, and 18 others, after the court found that the case had been unreasonably delayed.
Koko together with some of his family members were charged with corruption among others in a matter related to the awarding of billions of rand worth of contracts for work at the Kusile Power Station to companies allegedly linked to Koko’s family and friends.
In his ruling, Magistrate Stanley Jacobs pointed to how reports indicating the flow of funds, which he believed crucial to the case, were still outstanding and said that the inquiry has proven difficult.
Jacobs said that despite the prosecution blaming delays on the lack of adequate resources available to the Investigating Directorate, nevertheless the court required evidence in order to ensure procedural fairness.
The Magistrate further said should the case be reinstated, it would require the express permission of the National Director of Public Prosecution.
A jubilant Koko, lashed out at the NPA, and said it was doing the country and South Africans a disservice.
The former Eskom operational engineer said that the long time lapse following his arrest as well as his dismissal before that has proven the arbitrary and persecutory nature of his prosecution.
“You can’t make such allegations, investigate them for five years, bring me to court, wake me up at 6 in the morning and more than 12 months later you’re not ready to go to trial. What we see here is a hate crime. What’s happened to me and my family is nothing short of hate crime. It’s hate for Koko,” he said.
Koko said President Cyril Ramaphosa as well as cabinet dismissed him because he wanted to avert a severe crisis at Eskom when in truth he was collapsing Eskom so that it could be unbundled to allow the IPPs unfettered access at the expense of Eskom.
He pointed to the current state of the electricity crisis and said the power utility recorded the worst net loss after tax of R23.9 billion in 2023 despite a tariff increase of 9.61%.
Koko held that the NPA misdirected itself by charging him and that it was not acting without fear, favour or prejudice and said that the institution was acting out of political reasons.
“I am convinced that South Africans have a very exaggerated sense of the rule of law. They don’t think my family has rights as in the Bill of Rights. This is a persecution. That is why the banks have terminated my family’s bank accounts because of this criminal matter.
“The aim is to destroy and liquidate my family without the benefit of a fair trial. I have been rendered stateless in my country of birth,” he said.
Koko also berated the media and said it had failed in helping the public evaluate whether the ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions are proceeding appropriately or have been weaponised.
“The narrative that I am corrupt is too attractive for the media to be objective,” Koko said.
He insisted that South Africans should resist through voting, the privatisation of the provision of electricity through the IPPs because that is the strategic goal of the financial institutions saying the institutions were the biggest beneficiaries of the independent power producers programme.
“History will absolve those of us who successfully kept the lights on for three uninterrupted years in the period 2015-2018 without burning money with diesel and without skimping on maintenance. Our hearts were always in the right place,” he said.
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