THE controversy surrounding Eskom chief executive officer Jacob Maroga is a pointer to the hard times ahead, and if he goes it would derail a train that was going to stamp the black masses as the real owners of Eskom.

President Jacob Zuma needs to assess the ticking time-bomb in all state parastatals where of late we have seen black professionals being kicked out in numbers. He needs to have black intelligentsia involved in these.

What is discernible in all the brouhaha is the silence of the intellectual voice. The expansion project that Eskom is planning is in the New Partnership for Africa's Development blueprint, which is a drive to use local available resources and was developed by the intelligentsia under the tutelage of the African governments of the time.

In its capital expansion programme Eskom opted for a home-grown financing programme that shunned prospective takeover by the global corporation. Let Maroga continue and let the expansion project be financed by us the masses and let the economic spin-offs change Africa and its children.

The plan hatched in the leadership of Maroga wanted us the masses of the country to shoulder the foundation efforts, which surely will not only drive back more positive spin-offs for the poor but would cement the Southern African Development Community as a self-sufficient and independent power bloc.

By getting rid of Maroga, the capital expansion projects surely will fall under the global corporation for financing, which will lead to a depleting of Eskom's independence.

Zweli Mavuso, Limpopo