De Ruyter’s book mentions organising a routine Eskom stakeholders’ meeting at a guesthouse in Mpumalanga province. There are battles with three of the four ministers overseeing Eskom. Gwede Mantashe, Minister of Minerals and Energy and Ebrahim Patel, Minister of Trade and Industry are ideologues, and are openly hostile. Pravin Gordhan, Minister of Public Enterprises, comes across in the book as understanding the issues, but reluctant to take action on a number of core matters, out of loyalty to the ANC. De Ruyter is able to work well with Barbara Creecy, whose ministerial portfolio includes the environment. ALSO READ | Shrink-wrapped for bookshops as Moonlight: The insider secrets behind André de Ruyter's tell-all memoir

The author is analytical and logical, his arguments, whether you believe them or not, are sound. This will help readers from any political orientation to at least sympathise with his worldviews and approaches because he substantiates it with facts and reasoning.Knowing that ground zero for corruption in Eskom lay in the heart of the coal value chain in Mpumalanga, which is overseen by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy in its role as mining regulator, made Mantashe’s next move all the more galling. This book merits its place alongside How to Steal a City and How to Steal a Country. These two books chronicle how corruption undermined respectively a city and a country to the level where they became dysfunctional. Brazen looting

But, as the months passed, I increasingly realised that Ben was one of the few people brave enough to speak truth to power. The parade of Louis Vuitton bags at Megawatt Park bore testimony to my naivety. Meanwhile, Andre responded to news of the illegal distribution. He said in a statement: “It seems in South Africa anything related to Eskom is prone to being stolen.” The public has been warned against reading and sharing a PDF version of ex-Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter’s book. According to De Rutyer, Masemola told him everything he had just heard from the ex-Eskom boss was new to him – from sabotage to coal theft to illegal squatting in Eskom housing.De Ruyter further reportedly wrote he decided to initiate a intelligence investigation, which was funded by private donors, due to his mistrust of the SSA and the police. By far the most explosive aspect of the investigation was the intelligence that started to emerge that the Eskom crime syndicates potentially stretched right into the upper echelons of the political establishment, with two senior politicians said to be ultimately benefiting from the corruption through a web of interlinked interests. I have decided against naming them publicly at this stage, or giving too much detail away, as the investigation was still under way at the time of writing.