City Power blackout drama a result of ANC prioritising electioneering ahead of service delivery
25 October 2021
The Eskom – Joburg Mayor – City Power drama of this weekend could not have been scripted by the best screenwriters amongst us. No sooner had Eskom announced its implementation of rolling blackouts on Saturday night, with City Power speedily advising of its execution of same, only for the Joburg’s place-holder Mayor Moerane to release a statement purportedly rejecting the blackouts – the legal authority upon which he relies is known only to him and his team.
What followed is common cause - City Power claimed what Joburg residents were experiencing (rolling blackouts) was not, in fact, happening. What Joburg residents must undoubtedly be very clear on is that the ANC will stop at nothing to place its electoral priorities over the provision of basic services. They will continue their long-practiced pattern of making big, meaningless cosmetic actions and announcements in the final days of an election campaign, in hopes they will fool voters into giving them another electoral mandate.
Moerane’s attempt at preventing the execution of the blackouts must be understood against that background – yet another desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, a backlash from the voters in next week’s local government election – where voters are set to ring in the winds of change and deliver an ActionSA-led government to FIX the City of Joburg from years of ANC mismanagement.
This pattern of using basic services to save their doomed election campaign comes on the back of many that have preceded it. Since 2001, the Alexandra Renewal Project was used by the Joburg ANC to try to hold on to votes in one of the most densely populated areas of the City. In the months leading up to the general elections of 2019, there were precious little blackouts and billions of rands were spent, by Eskom, on diesel to keep previously mothballed power stations running so the ANC could claim they had ended the blackouts – only for them to make an unwelcome return after the ANC was returned to power.