Hon Deputy Speaker, this committee report deals with the state-owned enterprises, SOEs, under public enterprises presided over by Mr Gordhan. The reality is that the committee does not challenge the philosophical direction Mr Gordhan wants to take in relation to these SOEs. That is subject them largely to privatisation. That is why we cannot associate ourselves with it.
For purposes of this declaration we pay special focus on Eskom. Firstly, Mr Gordhan releases the restructuring and recovery plan for Eskom today. This is before he even appoints a credible and competent leadership over Eskom.
Meaning he is imposing a plan on the Eskom leadership. He is essentially telling us that he is going to run Eskom himself. Why then he did not put his curriculum vitae, CV, in the mix.
In his paper on the recovery plan, Mr Gordhan says Eskom is too big to manage and I am quoting him verbatim. This is utter rubbish which exposes him as the worst man for the job. No different to the current chairperson, chief executive officer, CEO, and board, called Jabu Mabuza. For until 10 years ago, Eskom was one of the world's best power utilities, but it was around 2008 when things started going down the South as evergreen coal contracts started taking its all on Eskom and later complemented by Independent Power Producers, IPPs, that the problem started.
When Mr Gordhan says Eskom is too big to manage, he is trying to convince himself that the privatisation process which starts with the unbundling process will save the power utility when in fact it does not, but essentially disposes of it.
Nothing is actually original at all in this plan that he unveiled today. Mr Gordhan outsourced his thinking to Investec because everything in that paper comes from the Investec one page paper written in November last year. He is unoriginal and basically here to disempower the state's capacity to deliver services that it ought to, so that we can depend on individually and privately-owned companies for our survival on electricity.
We reject this report. We reject the unbundling of Eskom as completely unoriginal and exposing Mr Gordhan as not the man for the job. Public enterprises must be shut down. It is an unnecessary department wasting taxpayers' money. [Time expired.] [Applause.]