The Presidency on Sunday distanced itself from the views expressed by President Jacob Zuma's special adviser on energy, Silas Zima, at an energy conference in Cape Town this week.
"The utterances reported in the media attributed to Mr Silas Zimu, special adviser to President Jacob Zuma on energy, at the Windaba energy conference in Cape Town, that Eskom 'is going down and under, very, very fast' are his personal views and do not represent the views of President Zuma, the Presidency or government," said Zuma's spokesman, Bongani Ngqulunga.
"Mr Zimu addressed the conference in his personal capacity. Government will continue to provide support to Eskom and to strengthen the state-owned entity, which is one of the country’s central engines for economic growth and development," Ngqulunga said.
City Press earlier on Sunday quoted Zimu as having said that with a new report detailing how Eskom was wasting billions of rand constructing power stations to supply electricity for which there was no demand, the state utility was “going down and under very, very fast”.
With the power parastatal’s poor governance and cash crunch – it held just above half its funding requirements for the current financial year – it was heading for a parliamentary inquiry similar to the one the SABC faced.
“What happened at the SABC portfolio is coming to Eskom. I personally believe that we’re not going to have the same Eskom that we had 10 years ago,” Zimu reportedly said.
He said breaking up the power utility had been in discussion since 1995, but the question was how to go about it and what parts to sell, the newspaper reported.
Zimu was speaking at the Windaba energy conference in Cape Town this week, during the same session in which a hard-hitting report on unnecessary expenditure on power generation was presented.
Compiled by consultants Meridian Economics, the report examined how decommissioning a number of old power stations and halting the planned construction of two Kusile units would save the cash-strapped utility between R15 billion and R17 billion, without affecting the security of power supply, City Press reported.