There is nothing irregular about minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa having two full-time special advisers who each get paid about R2.1m per year, as he explained in response to a parliamentary question from the EFF.
However, unlike other ministers, Ramokgopa already has access to more than 100 high-level officials and experts from the private and public sectors who make up the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom).
He also has ready access to a wealth of knowledge and research from a host of specialists that serve on the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC).
What guidance can Ramokgopa get from his advisers, Silas Zimu and Jacobus de la Rouviere, that he cannot get from researchers, industry leaders and other executives in Necom and the PCC?
One of his advisers, Zimu, was also a special adviser on energy to president Jacob Zuma in 2015-18. Part of his mandate at the time was to participate in the technical war room appointed by the cabinet in 2014 to deal with the electricity crisis. It would be fair to say that they did not manage to deal with the crisis then, so perhaps he can tell Ramokgopa what not to do.
Zimu (who was linked to a company that scored a R149m contract from Eskom after his appointment by Zuma) did, after all, say at a conference in Cape Town in November 2017 that Eskom “is going down and under, very, very fast”.
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