Cape Town - The opposition Democratic Alliance is to ask public enterprises minister Alec Erwin why Eskom's tender procedures were flouted in a way that appeared to favour a bid from a company linked to the ANC itself.

Ian Davidson, the DA chief whip said on Friday that Chancellor House, said to be an ANC front company, had signed another extremely lucrative contract with Eskom, almost doubling the ANC's stake in Eskom's expansion programme. It "shows yet again that the ANC does neither understand nor care about the distinction between party and state", Davidson said.

"The ANC - through Chancellor House - already owns 25% of Hitachi Power Africa, giving it a R3bn stake in a R20bn Eskom tender to build its new power station, under construction in Limpopo," Davidson said.

"Preferential treatment"

"It has now been awarded a similar tender to build a power station in Mpumalanga, without the project going out on tender," he added. "This cements the perception that due to Hitachi Africa's direct links to the ANC, it is being given preferential treatment when it comes to the awarding of multibillion-rand tenders. This is precisely the kind of abuse that comes about when the governing party is involved in deals of this kind."

He said that it was little wonder then that the party was able to present surprisingly healthy financial results in December, when in it was able to use state resources for its own financial gain.

"This is the worst form of crony capitalism, which left unchecked will lead SA even further down the road to becoming a criminal state," Davidson concluded.

END - I-Net Bridge