The deployment follows a request made by the presidency to Minister of Defence after several incidents of theft and sabotage at various power stations recently.

Calvin Rafadi, a senior investigator at the security service provider Bizz Tracers, said in an interview with eNCA that the SANDF deployment is premature and only "a publicity stunt".

"There were steps that Eskom needed to take for them to get to this drastic conclusion, and until they were able to prove to themselves that they needed the SANDF, it was premature," he says. 

"Eskom has forensic reports that have emanated that there is a crisis, and where does the crisis derive from? What motivated them to unleash the military? It shows people are not pulling in one direction, making deployments like this reckless.

"They say in their statement that the exact nature of the deployment would still be discussed or we'd still be let know, but obviously a lot of South Africans are thinking it's because of all the sabotage that they've been seeing, which also contributed to how badly we've been experiencing load-shedding lately.

"My advice to Eskom is to add a member who's an accredited fraud examiner on their board."

Rafadi says the problem is with Eskom's procurement system. "I suspect that they collude, they damage power stations so that they can come in and supply components and parts, and obviously most of those parts are not even from the original equipment manufacturers." 

"So what I'm saying is that we need to look at procurement, particularly in power plants, because there is no security, so they can come back and make money and extra money for themselves."

eNCA