Durban - As Eskom continues to plunge the country into darkness, opposition parties and energy experts yesterday reminded the country that President Cyril Ramaphosa had failed to fix the energy crisis – first as deputy president and then president of the country.
Opposition parties constantly remind the country that the state-owned enterprise remains a blight on the economy, a drain on the fiscus and the biggest inhibitor to job creation.
Ramaphosa has made promises, saying that load shedding would be a thing of the past from at least 2015.
DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi said that they maintained that Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe must be removed for solutions to be found to fix Eskom. “Ramaphosa is choosing a political ally rather than energy security for the country, ” Malatsi said.
IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa said wholesale changes to Eskom should have been made a long time ago.
“The new Eskom board is not the solution. When the CEO (André de Ruyter) took over, he made promises to turn things around, but he failed.”
Hlabisa said the money that was misused at Eskom would never be recovered and as a result infrastructure had not been maintained, meaning that fragile local economies battled for survival due to an inconsistent power supply.
EFF leader Julius Malema has accused the ANC government of deliberately destroying Eskom.
Energy expert Lungile Mashele said various task teams from the special Eskom committee known as the “Eskom war room”, set up in 2015, to the current National Energy Crisis Committee, had not been transparent and had delivered nothing.
She said the committees that had been set up in the past to deal with Eskom had all been failures.
“We don’t see how the current one is going to be any different.”
In 2014, Ramaphosa, who was deputy president at the time, was appointed as the chairperson of the war room, tasked with preventing the possibility of future load shedding.
The war room was made up of the departments of Energy, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Public Enterprises, National Treasury, Economic Development, Water and Sanitation and Eskom, as well as technical officials.
At the time the DA criticised Ramaphosa’s role in leading the war room, saying his company, Shanduka Group, had made money from selling coal to Eskom, but Ramaphosa said he had divested his financial interests in the group and held no mining interests.
Some of Ramaphosa’s unfulfilled promises on Eskom include:
- Sona 2019: “Eskom has made much progress in implementing its nine-point plan, ensuring better maintenance of its general fleet, reducing costs and ensuring adequate reserves of coal.”
- Ramaphosa responding to the debate on Sona 2019: “We want to put Eskom on a sustainable operational path and we have seen great improvements. We are closely engaged with the situation at Eskom, with the implementation of the nine-point plan, strengthening the board and setting out a road map for the future.”
- March 2019: “We are addressing the Eskom issue every day. I’m saying to the whole nation let’s not panic, let us join hands, close ranks and work together. That is why we are addressing it on an urgent basis. There is nothing much more urgent than restoring the power.”
- In September 2020 in his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said: “As we work with greater urgency to fix the immediate problem of an unreliable power system, we are also busy laying the groundwork for a sustainable, lasting solution to the country’s electricity woes.”