The threat of imminent rolling blackouts today is yet again proof that the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa have no plan to keep the lights on.
Eskom today sent out a power alert confirming “a high risk of stage 1 rotational loadshedding from 17:00 to 22:00 today”. The news comes after the Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan’s non-announcement last week, where he failed to give any solutions to an ANC-created crisis.
The truth is that the failing ANC government has no political will or durable plans to fix the broken power entity which has been hollowed out by decades of mismanagement and corruption.
The ANC’s scheme of burning through billions of rands of diesel the country cannot afford to keep the lights on until after Election Day has now truly backfired.
Instead of restructuring and unbundling Eskom to make it operationally and financially viable, the ANC placed the interests of their trade union allies above those of South Africans who desperately need the lights to stay on.
Ramaphosa and Mabuza do not know how to provide South Africans with a stable and reliable electricity supply. Instead of fixing Eskom, the ANC is choosing to engage in dirty electoral campaigns based on anarchy, violence and misinformation.
Last year, the DA introduced the Independent Systems Market Operator (ISMO) Bill or “cheaper electricity bill”. The bill seeks to break Eskom into two separate entities – a generation and transmission/distribution entity. Our plan would see a generation entity which is privatised in an effort to break Eskom’s monopoly on production of energy, allowing independent power producers to compete on an equal footing in the generation sector.
The DA is the only party that can build One South Africa for All where every citizen has access to cheaper electricity and a stable power supply. Only the DA can keep the lights on.