Labour union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has reiterated its call for the entire Eskom board to be disbanded and replaced by “competent men and women who will place the interests of the country and its people before anything else”.

This follows the resignation, on Friday, of Eskom board chairperson Jabu Mabuza.

The union said Mabuza and the rest of the Eskom board members had misled President Cyril Ramaphosa by presenting him with a false report in December committing that there “won't be any load-shedding until mid-January 2020.”

In December 2019, Ramaphosa assured South Africans that there would be no load-shedding until mid-January; however, load-shedding resumed early in January.

“We have said it on numerous occasions that the current Eskom board was not assisting in resolving the country's power crisis. It is even worse that the former chairperson goes to an extreme of misleading the State president.

“This is a total disrespect and should be treated as treason. We are calling for immediate removal of the entire board,” said NUM general secretary David Sipunzi.

The NUM welcomed Mabuza’s resignation, commenting that, “this is a decision that he should have long taken as he demonstrated his inability early in his tenure at Eskom”.

The union expressed the hope that more board members would voluntarily resign and that government leaders would hold themselves accountable for “unwarranted interference and influence in the parastatal”.

Failing this, the union has called on Ramaphosa to disband the board. Moreover, it voiced its support for the call by the Congress of South African Trade Unions for Ramaphosa to hold Pravin Gordhan responsible for the troubles at State-owned enterprises.