After 15 years of power blackouts and more than two decades of the government’s mismanagement of Eskom, the time has come for South Africans to say enough is enough and for heads to roll for the stage 6 power blackouts that have dashed hopes of an economic recovery.
There has been a lack of leadership at all levels — from President Cyril Ramaphosa to Eskom chair Malegapuru Makgoba and CEO André de Ruyter. With 12.4-million unemployed people and about half the country’s population living in poverty, SA cannot afford another day, week or month of blackouts. The country is heading for another recession in 2022. We need a short-term solution to this crisis.
Ramaphosa, who has been missing in action since stage 6 blackouts started on June 28, has shown poor leadership of the energy crisis since he led an Eskom war room seven years ago. Since he became president in 2018, SA has shed 8,139 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy in four-and-a-half years, which is 5.3 times the 1 528GHw that was shed in double the time during predecessor Jacob Zuma’s “nine wasted years”, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
In 2018, Eskom had an energy availability factor (EAF) — the power engineering bottom line — of 79.47% and an unplanned maintenance ratio of 10.18%. In April 2022, it has an EAF of 57% and an unplanned maintenance ratio of 30%. In another country, Ramaphosa would step down or his party would not re-elect him as their leader.
While former Eskom chair Jabu Mabuza was always the first person to take the heat for power blackouts, most South Africans would not recognise Makgoba if they saw him in their local mall. Since De Ruyter became CEO in January 2020, the crisis has gone from bad to worse. From 2020 to June 2022, the country has shed 6,595 GWh of energy, the equivalent of 63.9% of all the energy that has been shed since 2007. In two-and-a-half years, SA has shed 1.8 times the energy that was shed in 12 years from 2007 to 2019.
A CSIR report shows that SA shed 2,276 GWh of energy during the first six months of 2022. This was equivalent to 90.3% of the record 2,521 GWh that was shed in 2021. In other words, in six months Eskom has shed 1.5 times more energy than was shed during Zuma’s “nine wasted years”.
De Ruyter is a master at deflecting from his incompetence and pontificating about policy issues that are above his pay grade and none of his business.
He always talks about the future state of Eskom and shows no interest in tackling the current mess of a fleet that regularly has 20,000MW — a staggering 43% of nominal capacity — down. A week before wage talks broke down on June 21, an Eskom statement said 19,151MW was down. Ten days later, Eskom decided to play politics and blame its employees for the blackouts. If he was black, De Ruyter would have been fired long ago.
I hear that a senior cabinet minister has proposed that the government fire the Eskom board and executive committee, none of whom has expertise in power generation. Plan B is to get Makgoba to pull the gun on De Ruyter. There is no way out of this crisis in the short term except to get the existing fleet to work.
Ramaphosa must place Eskom into a power engineering (or technical) version of business rescue and get a consortium of engineers (local and international) to stabilise the fleet. To focus everyone’s minds, we must suspend all talk about restructuring until the fleet has stabilised. Makgoba and De Ruyter must do the right thing and step down. Other members of the Eskom board and executive committee should do the same.
• Gqubule is research associate at the Social Policy Initiative.
Correction: July 6 2022
This article has been corrected to reflect the correct calculation for power lost compared to the period of Zuma's tenure
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