Governance and law and order will not be compromised to ensure that the government is able to end load-shedding in a bid to save the ANC from losing its majority in next year’s elections, minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says.
His comments come a year ahead of the national and provincial elections in which the ANC’s own polling shows that the party’s electoral support is likely to slip to below 40%.
Ramokgopa, who also sits on the ANC’s national executive committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, says his priority is to reduce the intensity and frequency of load-shedding and not necessarily to secure votes for the governing party.
“We should disentangle what our electoral ambitions are and the requirements to resolve the [electricity crisis] ... they are related ... but we have a duty to do this responsibly and our actions can be substantiated,” he told Business Day in an exclusive interview.
Together with the declaration of the national state of disaster, Ramokgopa’s appointment is the latest attempt by the government to solve a more than decade-old electricity supply problem that has highlighted the systemic importance of state-owned enterprises and prompted the governing party to rethink its ideological stance on the role of the private sector in energy generation.
Last resort
The state of disaster gives powers to cabinet ministers to issue directives, in line with their portfolios, to ensure that critical infrastructure is exempt from load-shedding. This includes railways and ports, health facilities, water treatment plants, telecommunication services and food storage facilities.
But Ramokgopa believes the regulations should be invoked only as a last resort if existing legislation is insufficient for emergency procurement and environmental exemptions.
“It’s useful to have the state of disaster to the extent that the existing dispensation doesn’t permit me [to procure emergency goods or services] but it can’t just be used willy-nilly, otherwise it is abuse,” he said.
His job as electricity minister will force him to make difficult decisions, Ramokgopa said. While his main focus will be on seeing to the implementation of those interventions that will help improve the performance of the coal-fired generation fleet, he will also look at the general performance of all the power stations to see if fixing, rather than shutting down, some of the worst performers would be the most prudent financial decision.
However, he said, it is not necessarily the older stations that are the worst performers.
"[Where we are now] there is no relation between the age of a power station and its efficiency. The oldest power station is about two years away from decommissioning and it’s [one of the best] performing stations.”
Hendrina, Camden and Grootvlei power stations are scheduled for decommissioning over the next five years.
In January both Camden and Grootvlei outperformed the average generation performance of the total coal fleet.
Data from Eskom showed that in January the worst-performing coal-fired stations, measured by their energy availability factor (EAF), which expresses generation output as
a percentage of total installed capacity, were Kusile, Tutuka and Duvha.
Duvha, which was first commissioned in 1980, achieved an EAF of 20%, and Tutuka, commissioned in 1985, had an EAF of 33%. But a station such as Arnot, which was commissioned in 1971, achieved an EAF of 51% and Lethabo, the best-performing station in January with an EAF of 77%, was commissioned at the same time as Tutuka.
Ramokgopa’s appointment means that between him, mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan there are three departments responsible for energy, giving rise to questions about whether there are too many cooks in the kitchen and whether he will be able to stand his ground between Mantashe and Gordhan.
Fruitful
He has, however, rebuffed the concerns, saying that having served in various leadership capacities in the government and the ANC he is not “politically naive” and has had a fruitful working relationship with both ministers.
“One of the first things I did when my name was announced to be the minister of electricity was to have one-on-one meetings with those ministers [to understand our roles],” he said.
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