THE ANC GOVERNMENT IS KILLING THE WORKING CLASS AND THE POOR WITH LOADSHEDDING
13 December 2022
Press statement
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) condemns the ANC government for refusing to act decisively to deal with the energy crisis facing the country. For the last couple of days we have experienced stage 6 non-stop rolling blackouts, and we are now at stage 5 loadshedding.
We also reject, with contempt, the lame apology made by the public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan for loadshedding because we know that he is not being genuine. Eskom is collapsing, just like all the other SOE’s which have been destroyed under his leadership as the minister, because he is an SOE wrecking ball.
We also have to say that we find it obnoxious of minister Gwede Mantashe to claim that Eskom is agitating for the overthrow of the state. What an absurd statement from the minister of Energy, who is also the chairperson of the governing party.
He and his cabinet colleagues have all the power to fix the situation, but they are conveniently acting as if they do not. The ANC are responsible for deploying board members who take decisions on how the power utility is run. Therefore, they cannot throw their hands in the air as if they are powerless to do something about the situation.
NUMSA extends its condemnation to the board of Eskom as well for selling out the interests of the nation, in order to pander to a minister with a destructive agenda. The board of Eskom is choosing to defend Andre De Ruyter, even though he keeps demonstrating how completely incompetent he is.
When De Ruyter started as the GCEO of Eskom, he promised to end loadshedding in 18 months. But instead, we have experienced the worst power cuts in the history of Eskom. It is obvious that De Ruyter does not know how to end loadshedding and as long as he is at the helm, this will be a permanent problem.
NUMSA aligns itself with the statement issued by healthcare union YNITU yesterday calling for De Ruyters immediate removal because his gross incompetence is literally costing lives in our public hospitals because patients are dying.
The ANC government is aware that persistent loadshedding is killing patients in public hospitals, but even this knowledge, is not enough to persuade them to do the right thing, and act to save lives. The ANC is killing the working class and the poor with loadshedding and they do not care. It is clear that the working class are being sacrificed so that the private sector can play a greater role in energy generation in South Africa.
The ANC keeps showing us whose interests it prioritizes. If these were patients dying in private hospitals, there would be no debate about removing De Ruyter, he would be long gone. But because it is poor black people who are dying, the ANC is willing to gamble with the lives of the working class because it has never loved the Black and African working class. It is obsessed with pandering to the demands of the privileged wealthy elite, and its job for the last 28 years has been to be a security guard for private capital in particular.
This is demonstrated in the so-called solutions which President Ramaphosa outlined earlier this year to deal with loadshedding. Ramaphosa’s plan is to remove barriers to private power investment, and explore new legislation to regulate private generation projects. He has also allowed the private sector to generate its own electricity so that it no longer depends on Eskom. In the long term, Eskom will lose big customers in the mining sector and in other energy intensive industries, which will lead to its eventual collapse.
The ANC government refuses to allow Eskom to play any role in rolling out renewable energy, because it wants the private sector to have a complete monopoly in this space. It is worth noting that part of Ramaphosa’s plan is that there will be a focus on ensuring that surplus capacity will be bought from existing independent power producers.
We also cannot ignore that Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law, billionaire businessman Patrice Motsepe, is a major beneficiary in the renewable energy space. At least 12 out of 25 contracts were granted to an energy consortium that he is part of, for bid window 5 of the states renewable energy program. This is not a coincidence. Loadshedding is a consciously engineered crisis which the capitalist class, including Ramaphosa and his family, are directly benefitting from. They are making a fortune from our misery.
We are not surprised that Ramaphosa would prioritize the involvement of the private sector as a solution for energy generation in this country. Energy and renewable energy in particular, has become a new site of capitalist accumulation. As long as we have persistent loadshedding, then it becomes difficult to justify the existence of Eskom, and the role of the private sector can also be justified.
At the same time, we must stop being naïve about how self-serving capital is. After all, Ramphosa is himself a billionaire and he has all the hallmarks of a greedy corrupt capitalist particularly when you look at the whole Phalaphala farmgate saga. The president had the audacity to hide a minimum of 580 thousand U.S. dollars in his sofa, which is the equivalent of 9.8 million rand. Ramaphosa brazenly continued to do business whilst occupying the presidential office.
He hid money even though he knew that employees of the ANC have not been paid salaries in months and are owed a minimum of R10 million. The President knowingly and deliberately denied them an income, and the organisation even pleaded poverty in the labour court, claiming it cannot afford to pay salaries. And yet its party leader was literally sitting on millions of dollars in cash hidden in his furniture.
This ANC has been showing the working class the middle finger for a long time. We can never forget that this is the same ANC which allowed 34 unarmed miners to be massacred live on TV in Marikana in 2012, all because workers were demanding a living wage and an improvement in their living and working conditions.
The very same ANC murdered 144 patients at Life Esidimeni who died unnecessarily from dehydration and starvation caused by neglect because of the shocking conditions they were exposed to, when they were moved from a legitimate institution to unregistered NGO’s, as part of the ANC’s cost cutting measures. Under their watch, we have become the most unequal society on earth, with extremely high levels of poverty and unemployment.
This crisis will only deepen if the ANC continues to drive an agenda for the privatization of energy generation. The private sector will be able to charge us whatever they want to, because we are so desperate for electricity, we will pay any price. And these are the perfect conditions for capitalism to thrive.
We are already paying an arm and a leg for electricity and this will worsen. And those who cannot afford, will simply be cut off from accessing electricity. If we continue to allow the ANC to continue with its destructive program, the working class will never escape poverty and inequality.
This week the ANC will be going to its elective conference to elect new leadership. There has been a deliberate attempt to create the false impression that Ramaphosa is a ‘better devil’ than any other candidate. There has been a lot of deliberate fear-mongering to sway the public into accepting the abnormal, and there is even an attempt to drill into our consciousness that persistent power outages are normal. NUMSA is clear that this is not normal and we reject the lie peddled by Ramaphosa that there is no immediate solution for loadshedding and it is here to stay. They need us to believe this nonsense as they prepare the private sector for a wholesale takeover of the energy sector.
Unless the working class rises and organises itself to defend the supply of energy from coal, which still remains the dominant form of energy in South Africa, we are in deep trouble. They are creating a hell on earth for the working class. Capital is determined to migrate to where finance is, and finance is in in renewables. Without pressure from the working class, no one in government will resolve the current crisis because it does not directly affect them. The working class must defend their jobs and defend their livelihood’s because the ANC is carrying out the orders of capital.
We cannot look to the government or to the bosses to save us. The working class is on its own and it has the power to defend and save us all.
Aluta continua!
The struggle continues!
Issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, 13 December 2022
