Open Secrets Newsletter | May 2025
Winter is coming and we are turning up the heat!
We’re turning up the heat on profiteers and powering up people’s movements. May was a month of fierce truth-telling and collective courage—from the stirring voices at our second People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers to our legal showdown with the NPA and Hawks over PRASA corruption. At Open Secrets, we believe justice doesn’t wait politely—it demands action. We’re standing with communities who refuse to be sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed, whether it’s coal mines choking the air in Mpumalanga or billion-rand backroom deals lighting up smelters while ordinary South Africans are left in the dark. If you’re fired up, keep reading—and join us in holding power to account.
People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers: We Can’t See the Sunset
On 14 May 2025, Open Secrets held the second People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers, a powerful day of art, activism, and accountability at the Homecoming Centre in Cape Town. The People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers 2: We Can’t See the Sunset was filled with powerful testimonies by speakers from Mpumalanga and Kwazulu-Natal sharing the devastating impact of coal mining on their lives and communities.
Open Secrets also launched the We Can’t See the Sunset zine and premiered a documentary of the same name, both of which built on the findings of the 2024 People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers.
Through image, sound, and story, the day laid bare the violence of energy profiteering—and the luminous hope carried by those building a future rooted in justice. We are truly inspired by the resistance and tenacity of movements like Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA), Vhutala Environmental Movement (VEM), Womxndla Community Development, Khutala Environmental Care Group and Sukumani Community Development.
Open Secrets is taking the NPA and Hawks to court
Open Secrets has filed an application at the North Gauteng High Court, Pretoria to review the conduct of the Hawks and the NPA during their long-running investigation into corruption at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). The application asks the court to declare unlawful both the delay in finalising the investigations by the Hawks and the NPA, and the related failure by the NPA to decide whether to prosecute the perpetrators. What happens when these institutions fail to act? The enablers of corruption who shut down passenger rail in South Africa are emboldened and are comfortably sitting in Parliament and elsewhere.
Eskom’s R92bn ‘gift’ for South32
An Open Secrets investigation reveals for the first time a massive ‘gift’ given by Eskom to JSE listed company South32. Documents given to us show that South32’s Hillside aluminium smelter received around a 50% discount from Eskom that could add up up to R92bn over the life of the deal. While the power utility says South Africa receives a ‘net benefit’, there is no evidence of this. Eskom told Open Secrets that large industrial users like Hillside “play a vital role in sustaining local economies”. But it also conceded that “South32 commissioned and provided to Eskom and NERSA an economic assessment of the Hillside smelter”, suggesting they relied on the company itself to determine how good it was for the local economy – a serious conflict of interest in a decision with vast implications for the public.
The problem is that consumers are carrying the extra costs of these deals, effectively subsidising the large companies. Consider that this ‘discount’ is the equivalent of the annual electricity use of 700,000 South African homes. While South African’s may be the losers, South32’s CEO Graham Kerr took home R200,000 a day for his services to the company. We can only assume that the Eskom subsidies have benefited the Australian corporate titan.
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In The Media
- WATCH | Luthando Vilakazi on Newzroom Afrika – Open Secrets wants review of Prasa’s graft investigations
- WATCH | Open Secrets wants Hawks to finalise PRASA investigation findings
- LISTEN | #POWERBreakfast with Tessa Dooms | In conversation with Ariella Scher, Head of Legal at Open Secrets
- LISTEN | 702 Drive with John Perlman – Eskom’s “gift” of R92 billion to South32
- READ | Business Live – Open Secrets goes to court over Prasa state capture era crimes
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