Opposition party leaders say South Africans should stop holding their breath that the ANC government will fix Eskom any time soon.
Action SA’s Herman Mashaba said load-shedding was a case in point for why he would not consider a coalition with the ANC post elections.
Rise Mzansi’s Songezo Zibi said the rot at Eskom is too deep for public enterprise minister Pravin Gordhan or newly appointed Eskom CEO Dan Marokone to make any significant difference.
Their comments, in interviews with Business Day, came as the national power utility resumed stage 2 and 3 load-shedding after three of its generating units failed to return to service as expected after summer maintenance work, and it lost a further six units.
The return to load-shedding came despite still-low holiday season demand, as well as an extra 800MW of new capacity from Kusile Unit 5, which was synchronised to the grid for the first time on 31 December.
Recent independent and political party polling shows that Action SA and Rise Mzansi are projected to grow their support significantly in the runup to the 2024 general election.
Mashaba said his party’s first order of business is the removal of the ANC. “You cannot build [an] economy in an environment of chaos. After that we need to remove draconian labour laws, we need to take power away from the unions too,” said Mashaba.
Zibi said that even getting a stable board at Eskom has been a challenge for years. “Even this board lacks institutional capacity. At Eskom, if you were to go back to the board that Reuel Khoza chaired — compare the experience of that board to this one — that was a ... high quality board,” said Zibi.
He emphasised that even with the best of intentions, the patronage system in government, including at state-owned enterprises, required a complete overhaul.
“Still now after state capture, who makes it on the board of Eskom or Transnet and Denel or whatever serves the interest of who appoints them and not very well by the way if you look at Eskom and Transnet. The trucking lobby has its hands in the politics, in government and in Transnet and Eskom [and so on]. Look at inflated costs still today. Only if you remove the government, can you remove the corrupt ecosystem. You can remove the Pravins (individually), but it is not going to help, it is endemic,” said Zibi.
Eskom announced on Tuesday that it successfully completed “a full load rejection test” on unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear power station. This was the final test to be performed after the installation of new steam generators at the unit.
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