Note to editors: Please find attached soundbite by Samantha Graham-Maré MP
After 16 years of a crippling load-shedding crisis, the best solution that the ANC government could muster was to solicit and parade a donation of low voltage diesel generators from China. As if this wasn’t pathetic enough, the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, had the temerity to gloat and perpetuate his discredited lie that ‘… load-shedding will be a thing of the past this December’.
Far from being a panacea to the load-shedding crisis, the Chinese generator donation was a symbol of ANC government failure. As the Chinese quadrupled investment in renewable energy in their own country, they were more than happy to dump the gasoline-guzzling generators to the hapless ANC government.
Even with claims that the Chinese have provided initial funding to fuel the generators, it is obvious that they won’t maintain this funding in perpetuity. Ramokgopa and his band of clueless ANC comrades have not provided any clarity on where the money for the diesel will come from once the Chinese money tap dries up.
With the number of schools, clinics, hospitals and police stations around the country, the donation is a drop in the ocean as it will not cover half of those facilities. Besides, one generator will struggle to provide enough power to supply an average-sized health centre. Ramakgopa and the ANC know that the Chinese donation was just a window dressing and is not a viable intervention to keep vital institutions with power over the long term.
Ramakgopa and the ANC government should stop with these sideshows and provide the country with tangible plans to fix the load-shedding crisis that they created. Reducing South Africa to a net receiver of donations is frankly humiliating and is a grave indictment on Ramaphosa’s failed new dawn.
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