Eskom's Molefe was on 'unpaid leave' – affidavits

Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe never actually resigned from the company, both he and Public Enterprises Minister Lynn Brown agree in new affidavits. Instead, under a new agreement, he is now formally considered to have been on ‘unpaid leave’ during the period he served as an MP, says a Mail & Guardian report. But, it says, in a set of sworn statements, Molefe and Brown don’t quite manage to agree on why Molefe returned to Eskom, after never officially leaving it. The two filed lengthy affidavits yesterday in a Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) application by the DA that ultimately seeks Molefe’s removal from the Eskom CEO post. As he had never legally left Eskom’s employ, Molefe says, he had been ‘legally obliged to continue in my employment’. Yet elsewhere he also holds that the Eskom board had asked him to return because he was needed. ‘It was explained to me that Eskom wanted me to return because of a concern about stabilising leadership and to address operational issues that it was facing,’ Molefe says of what he describes as an approach from the utility ‘in late April’.