#EskomCrisis: Gordhan's only plan is to keep the lights on until elections.
3 April 2019
Today’s non-announcement by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, confirmed the worst about Eskom and South Africa’s energy landscape. Gordhan has acceded to the fact that the ANC government does not have the political will to fix the broken power entity which has been hollowed out by decades of mismanagement and corruption.
The announcement that Eskom will not be restructured or unbundled to make it economically viable, proves that the ANC has once again placed the interests of their trade unions allies above those of South Africans who desperately need our country to have secure energy supply. What is clear is that this government is more concerned about looking after their electoral prospects by pandering to the unions than they are about keeping the lights on and stemming the jobs bloodbath which will likely follow. This announcement is at odds with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address which once again shows that Ramaphosa is not in charge of the ANC but is led by the different factions which include the unions.
The ANC are unable and unwilling to make the difficult decisions which are needed to resuscitate Eskom and South Africa’s future. They have elected not to:
- Tackle the bloated workforce at Eskom with a promise of no retrenchments