STRAIGHT TALK
27 January 2023
Since my last newsletter, titled The DA’s response to the energy crisis”, the DA has taken several further bold actions to help solve SA’s energy crisis.
Yesterday, the DA led a huge, peaceful and successful Power to the People march to Luthuli House, ANC headquarters. The reasons for doing so were important. Voters need to understand that ANC corruption and incompetence, not Eskom or Nersa, are to blame for loadshedding and high electricity prices. The ANC needs to understand that if it continues on its obstructionist path, it will lose power.
On Monday and Tuesday this week we were in court to rip out the problem at its roots by having the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment declared illegal. Because of the cadre deployment committee records that the DA exposed to the country last year, we know it is at Luthuli House where, over the past 25 years, the decisions were made to “deploy” the corrupt and incompetent ANC cadres who destroyed Eskom.
Also this week, DA-run Cape Town became the first city to successfully negotiate a feed-in tariff with Treasury, which will allow the City to soon pay businesses and residents for supplying their excess electricity to the local grid. This is just the latest of several measures taken to shield residents from ANC loadshedding.
Last week, the DA filed court papers to interdict the Nersa tariff increase, on the basis that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for ANC corruption and incompetence. As part of the application, we also asked that the court direct government to file, within 30 days, a comprehensive plan, including short-term, medium-term and long-term steps, to avert the energy crisis.
On Monday next week, the DA will be in court again. This is for our other case against cadre deployment, which is a PAIA application to obtain all cadre deployment minutes from the time President Ramaphosa was chair of the ANC’s national deployment committee. The ANC says cadre deployment is freedom of speech, yet Ramaphosa is intent on hiding his minutes.
Of course, the energy crisis is just the most visible of the multiple crises hitting South Africa, all with the same root causes. The DA’s offer to South Africans in the make-or-break general election of 2024 will be to not just do things better, but to do things differently.
We are offering fundamental rather than superficial reform, in line with our four core governing principles, which are a commitment to the rule of law, a market-driven economy, a capable state that delivers to all, and nonracialism. In this newsletter from June last year, I set out why each of these core principles is an essential prerequisite for fixing our energy crisis and for building a prosperous South Africa.
I hope the many links in this newsletter will serve to reassure you that the DA is going all out to help solve the energy crisis.
Yours Sincerely,
John Steenhuisen
