Eskom Crisis: ANC blames “sabotage” as they drop the ball on South Africans

13 February 2019

The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes reports of comments made by ANC National Spokesperson, Zizi Kodwa, who allegedly stated that Eskom’s Stage 4 load-shedding is “suspicious”, and an outright attempt to sabotage President Ramaphosa’s vision for South Africa, after his State of the Nation Address (SONA), last week Thursday.

Such claims are serious in nature and the DA will call upon the Hawks to investigate any potential acts of sabotage against Eskom. The planned disruption or interference with Eskom’s ability to deliver services to South Africans is tantamount to treason, and if proven guilty, any parties involved must be tried and criminally charged for their actions.

It is entirely possible though that the ANC may be using calls of sabotage as a diversion tactic from the one true sabotage that has occurred – this being the 9 year-long mismanagement and corruption of Eskom, which has left millions of South Africans in the dark.

Furthermore, Kodwa reportedly stated that government’s intention to unbundle Eskom would help make the fraught state-owned entity more profitable. This has been followed by reports of the ANC secretary general, Ace Magashule, stating that Luthuli House would oppose Ramaphosa’s SONA calls for unbundling.

The ANC’s right hand is completely unaware of what the left hand is doing, and in this process of issuing contradictory statements, both hands are dropping the ball on South Africans. The ANC has proven once again that internal party politicking will always be prioritised above and beyond the needs of citizens. South Africans have once again been left in the dark with no electricity, and local businesses suffer greater losses each and every day, under these relentless rolling blackouts.

The DA is the only party that has a plan to solve the Eskom crisis with our “cheaper energy bill” which seeks to break Eskom into two separate entities, namely into a generation and transmission entity. Our offer would see the generation entity privatized in an effort to break Eskom’s monopoly, allowing independent power producers to compete on an equal footing in the generation sector. The DA plan would amount to real change, not merely the addition of more board members.

The time for politicking is over, South Africans deserve an immediate and urgent solution to what should undoubtedly be declared a national crisis.

The time for action is now and the DA will continue to fight to ensure South Africans are no longer left in the dark.

Issued by Natasha Mazzone, DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises, 13 February 2019