Johannesburg - South Africans have criticised President Cyril Ramaphosa for saying that the country must see the current Stage 6 load shedding in a positive light.
They said Ramaphosa, who was speaking on the sidelines to the media at a Q&A in Cape Town on Tuesday night, is out of touch; had he been affected by the power cuts, he would have attended to the matter with urgency.
As the country grapples with ongoing rolling blackouts, Ramaphosa has told South Africans that short-term pain is worth long-term gain.
Pretoria resident KG Moxwale said he was out of touch.
“At the roots of this authoritarianism lies the arrogance of the ANC: the arrogance that proposes that the ANC will rule until the second coming of Jesus; the arrogance that proposes that Jesus himself would have been a member of the ruling party,” said Moxwale.
Minister of Electricity Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the current Stage 6 load shedding is due to power utility Eskom’s failure to adhere to its planned maintenance schedule.
Ramokgopa provided an update on the performance of the electricity grid on Tuesday as the country plunged into Stage 6 load shedding, which the power utility said would last until the end of this week. Ramaphosa said Eskom had to take these measures now to permanently eradicate power cuts.
“This load shedding is occasioned by what Eskom is having to do to reposition the generation of our fleet; they are maintaining our fleet. They are making sure that incidents of load shedding that have been given rise to in the past as a result of unplanned load shedding events where there were breakdowns are put behind us. So this, as much as it is Stage 6, is of a short-term nature.
“The minister of electricity has briefed me thoroughly on all the processes that Eskom is going through. So there is short-term pain for long-term gain,” said Ramaphosa.
“We are obviously worried whenever there is load shedding, but as you go through this process now, we must see it in a positive light because, in the long term, these are things that we have to do to make sure that we say goodbye to load shedding.”
Sicelo Xulu, the former City Power CEO and current chairperson of the board, said the briefing from the minister painted a very difficult picture. “The breakdowns of the coal fleet are still too high; the other worrying factor is the high partial load losses. The combination of the two takes away a huge capacity from the grid, which leads to higher stages of load shedding to protect the integrity of the grid,” said Xulu.
“Sanedi stands ready to assist the government with the establishment of the Project Management Office, and we are already engaging the various parties involved, including the minister of electricity. Our view is that the minister should detach himself from Eskom and focus on the implementation of the energy action plan through the Project Management Office. That way he can provide political oversight properly,” said Xulu.
The Star