Immediate imperatives to turn around Eskom, resolve the energy crisis and end load-shedding

24 February 2023

The turnaround of Eskom is an immediate imperative to resolve the energy crisis and end load-shedding. To this end, Eskom should ramp up the maintenance of its existing fleet of power stations to original equipment manufacturer specifications and increase its electric power generation capacity to make electricity available uninterruptedly. This will also require the completion of the Medupi and Kusile Power Station projects and new investment in Eskom to build greater productive capacity now and going forward than going back.

A competent and adequately resourced focus on Eskom’s developmental mandate based on increasing its total productive capacity will reduce breakdowns and other system failures and improve its Energy Availability Factor. This is what the workers and poor and the entire economy direly need to, among others, support existing employment and additional provision of work to reduce unemployment.

Equally important, the state should strengthen the security of the entire infrastructure of Eskom as part of the energy national state of disaster interventions, and going forward to safeguard national energy security.

Failed former Eskom CEO

The failed former Eskom CEO nailed his colours to the mast in an interview broadcast by the eNCA on “My Guest Tonight with Annika Larsen” this week, on 22 February 2023. In 2018, the year before he was appointed its CEO, Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor was approximately 72 per cent. As he leaves Eskom in February 2023, its Energy Availability Factor has significantly fallen, down to around 58 per cent. With de Ruyter at its helm, load-shedding has worsened because of this deterioration in Eskom’s productive capacity to generate and make electricity available.

Also, it is almost impossible to be convinced that de Ruyter is committed to fighting corruption. One reason for this is that he has been in the most powerful position of authority as Eskom’s CEO. In terms of South Africa’s anti-corruption law, a person in that position of authority is obliged to report any acts of corruption to the law enforcement authorities to act.

What must now follow is for law enforcement authorities to investigate whether indeed de Ruyter had any knowledge of corruption activities at Eskom, which he did not report for law enforcement authorities to act. de Ruyter has to be held accountable for his failure to discharge his duties, should it be established that he indeed had such knowledge and did not report to the law enforcement authorities to act.

During the interview with eNCA, de Ruyter came across as an apartheid apologist who clearly appeared to be haunted by the ghosts of apartheid oppressors like DF Malan, Hans Strijdom and Hendrik Verwoerd, to name but a few. The hatred by the apartheid oppressors of the theory of liberation seems to weigh like a nightmare on de Ruyter’s mind. Developed by Dr Karl Marx, an outstanding scientific researcher and undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers in human history, the theory emphasises the need to end the exploitation of the working-class by capitalist bosses and its consequent forms of oppression, among others, towards equality in practice.

Marx’s works inspired the Great October Socialist Revolution that occurred in Russia in 1917, with V.I. Lenin playing a key role. The revolution broke the back of an oppressive regime. In our country Marx’s works, in addition to the strategies and tactics developed by Lenin, also inspired and guided our South African struggle for liberation towards the democratic dispensation the struggle achieved in April 1994. South Africans must refuse to go back to the apartheid practices that de Ruyter propagates.

Under DF Malan, apartheid prime minister from its founding in 1948 to 1954, the apartheid regime imposed the Suppression of Communism Act, in 1950. Having started first by targeting communist revolutionaries, banning the Communist Party and any communist activity and literature under the draconian law, the apartheid regime increasingly intensified and widened the racist prohibition of political rights, freedom of expression, and other freedoms.

Since our liberation struggle was led, co-ordinated and organised by comrades in the true sense of the word, the apartheid oppressors did not like to hear anyone addressing another person as a comrade. de Ruyter has displayed the same attitude, arguing the word comrade must not be used. How he relates to the friendly title of the popular “Comrades Marathon” must be taking a toll on him.

The working-class needs to unite and deepen the struggle for scientific socialism, among others against the destruction of Eskom’s productive capacity by nexus of neoliberal policy prescriptions, state capture and incompetent executives. This nexus coalesces in promoting private interests, among others to replace productive state capacity to generate electricity in the long run. de Ruyter’s utterances fit in with this agenda.

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, Central Committee and Political Bureau Member: Spokesperson and Secretary for Policy and Research, 24 February 2023