South Africa approves appointment of Tshediso Matona as Chief Executive of Eskom

South African Cabinet approved the appointment of current Department of Public Enterprises Director-General, Mr Tshediso Matona, as the Chief Executive of Eskom at its meeting held in Cape Town last week. Eskom is a South African electricity public utility, established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission by the government of South Africa.

Mr. Matona formally succeeds Mr. Brian Dames who resigned with effect from 31 March 2014. Mr Collin Majila has been Acting Chief Executive since 1 April 2014.

Mr. Matona has been closely involved in providing oversight to Eskom and the other State-Owned Companies in the Department's portfolio for the past 3 years. Prior to that, Mr Matona was the Director-General for the Department of Trade and Industry for 5 years.

In recent months he has played a key role in the Inter-departmental Task Team comprising of the Departments of Public Enterprises, Energy and National Treasury which have been working with Eskom and the National Regulator to formulate a solution to the immediate challenges facing Eskom. The Task Team should present its report to Cabinet by September.

Mr Matona has also been at the centre of Government policy-planning and has led the execution of its major strategic programmes, in the fields of International Trade, Industrial Development and Investment Facilitation, Enterprise Development, Economic Regulation, Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment, Infrastructure Development.

Mr Matona holds a Masters Degree in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia (UK, 1994), a Bachelor/Honours degrees in Economics and Political Science from the University of Cape Town (1992). Since then he has completed various certificates including in Executive Management (2005) and Infrastructure Development (2011) from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government (USA).

He is the former Director General of the Department of Trade and Industry (2006-2010).

He also served as Trade Diplomat for South Africa to the UN & World Trade Organisation in Geneva.