Ramaphosa to announce electricity minister's powers 'soon'

President Cyril Ramaphosa has hinted to parliament what minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s responsibilities will be — and procurement will not be one of them.

Ramokgopa was appointed minister early last month, but Ramaphosa has yet to promulgate a gazette setting out his powers. On Thursday, ANC MP Khayalethu Magaxa asked Ramaphosa to outline Ramokgopa’s strategy to shield South Africa from stage 7 or 8 load-shedding this winter.  

Ramokgopa will focus on energy generation while public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan will ensure that there is a transmission company. Mineral resources minister Gwede Mantashe will keep an eye on policy and procurement, said Ramaphosa. 

“The minister of electricity has his work cut out and finalisation, which is due to be announced very shortly, of actually all the mandate matters that he has to attend to, set out precisely exactly what he is meant to do.”  

Ramaphosa said lifting the national state of disaster on the energy crisis will not impede the minister’s work.  

“What we have been doing is to look at the tasks that relate to generation in the Electricity Regulation Act and those tasks that need to be executed by the minister of electricity. 

“They include matters of generation and the identification of the type of energy source we need. Thereafter, co-operating with the minister of minerals and resources and energy for the procurement process. Once  it has been procured, the minister of electricity will ensure that it is implemented.  

“He will deal with matters such as the financial close and also ensure that once there is financial close and it is implemented, the grid or transmission is ready. In this regard, (he) will also be working very closely with institutions such as the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) and in all of this will be co-operating very closely with the minister of public enterprises.”

Ramokgopa was also responsible for driving the various actions being co-ordinated by the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) to end load-shedding as a matter of urgency, he said.  

“Matters of energy policy remain the responsibility of the minister of mineral resources and energy.”’ 

Defending his decision to place the ministry in his office, Ramaphosa said it does not diminish the accountability. “Minister Ramokgopa is by no means the only minister whose work is lodged in the Presidency. We’ve got three ministers who are accountable to parliament whose work is lodged in the Presidency.” 

The decision is meant to enhance the work that needs to be done, he said.  

On parliamentary oversight, Ramaphosa said parliament is required (in terms of the constitution and its own rules) to development mechanisms to ensure that all executive organs of state in the national sphere of government are accountable to it and to maintain oversight of the exercise of the national executive authority. 

IFP MP Narend Singh said all three ministers have their work cut out for them, “and I hope it does not include having serious differences in the cabinet room dealing with the matter at hand”.  

Ramaphosa reiterated that the three areas of work were critical to South Africa's electricity architecture. 

“I outlined what each is doing and now as all of them face the challenges that lie ahead, they are finding that they have to co-operate even more. That is why there are no fights in cabinet, no turf war which is being bandied about in the media.  

“They are co-operating well and they know at what point they need to talk to each other to move things forward.”  

Ramaphosa denied his cabinet had failed to keep the lights on: “we're not sleeping on the job.” 

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.