Eskom’s cash scramble points to ANC’s failures and corruption
This week’s revelation that the Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, tabled a report which details a R17 billion bailout for Eskom due to an emergency cash problem points to a power utility that is no longer viable and sustainable.
Eskom and other State Owned Enterprises have become a black hole that the South African tax payer needs to constantly fill. This is not simply because these entities have been badly managed, but because they have been used as looting vehicles for the ANC and the politically connected for decades.
The DA has been reliably informed that Eskom is not using the Chinese Development Bank loan and the bailouts for maintenance of our power plants - which are the original sin that led to this crisis. They are using the money to literally pay salaries and keep the lights on by burning through billions of Rands worth of diesel until after the elections.
This means that South Africa will no doubt be plunged into darkness this winter once again as the ANC has misled the public about the gravity of the problems at Eskom.
The reality is that Eskom cannot keep South Africa’s lights on because the business model of the entity is fundamentally broken. The DA has long reached out to the ANC government with solid solutions that would see the entity broken up into sustainable and functioning enterprises. We have proposed a bill that would allow for the introduction of independent power producers that would cheapen the cost of electricity, bring about much needed competition and ensure that South Africa is not being tanked by the black hole that Eskom has become.