Thabo Mbeki’s revisionist stance on the load-shedding crisis is outright lies
27 August 2023
Former President, Thabo Mbeki’s historical amnesia and gross mischaracterisation of the factors that led to the ongoing load-shedding crisis borders on propaganda and outright lies. It was Mbeki’s ANC administration which committed the original sin by failing to invest in new generation capacity when they were warned that demand was close to outstripping supply.
Speaking at an event organised by UNISA last week, Mbeki is reported to have shifted the blame on the origins of the load-shedding crisis entirely to Eskom. He made the claim that Eskom’s management deliberately caused an electricity crisis and load-shedding “…because the people in charge of the power stations did not do what they were supposed to do – replenish coal.”
In a cowardly cop-out in which he tried to absolve himself and his ANC administration from any responsibility, Mbeki said that the narrative that his government ignored warnings to invest in new generation capacity and infrastructure was “false” and “cooked up”.
This is the same Mbeki, who in 2007 was quoted saying "When Eskom said to the government: 'We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation', we said no, but all you will be doing is just to build excess capacity. We said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong”. Mbeki must inform us what has changed from this position that has warranted his sudden turn to absolve himself of any responsibility.