'There’s nothing he’s going to do to help Eskom': Shivambu on Ramaphosa cutting his trip short

EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu says President Cyril Ramaphosa's decision to cut short his overseas visit and return to the country is nothing but a “gimmick”. 

The president cut his international trip short on Monday after Queen Elizabeths funeral to attend to the country's electricity crisis.

Eskom escalated load-shedding to stage 6 on Sunday to prevent the collapse of the national grid and its executives warned there was a risk the situation could deteriorate further this week. 

Shivambu said Ramaphosa's decision to cut his trip short after he was expected to address the UN General Assembly was a gimmick he had performed before. 

“He performed this gimmick before ... cut an international trip short, then came back to tell lies that load-shedding was caused by internal sabotage, and that the saboteurs will be arrested,” Shivambu said. 

“There’s nothing he’s going to to do to help Eskom, so he might as well stay there forever.”

Former EFF MP Fana Mokoena said Ramaphosa might as well go back to the US.

“Ramaphosa will fly back to SA from England. We’re now hearing he was first going back to the US before coming back to SA. Why was he going back to the US? He’s just been there. Anyway, he might as well go back to the US because he’ll come back here and do nothing.”

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said there is no guarantee Eskom's looting won’t continue under Ramaphosa's watch.

“It must never be forgotten that Cyril Ramaphosa served as the deputy president during the Zuma years when looting and the pilfering of our SOEs was at its peak. What guarantees can he provide that the fleecing of the taxpayer will not continue under his continued stewardship of the power utility?”

Mashaba said South Africans are already “stretched too thin, with the cost of living on a precipitous incline and wholly unaffordable fuel prices”.

“There has, for a long time, been no question that there is a dearth of skills and political will to tackle our persisting energy crisis which has a very real human cost for business and employment in this country.

“The truth is that SA is running out of time and our leaders have no plan to address it. Their only answer is to hold the SA taxpayer ransom by making them pay for government’s own failures.”

Last week, after Eskom implemented stage 4 load-shedding, Ramaphosa pleaded for patience with the embattled power utility. 

“Eskom continues to face considerable challenges and, as I said, we needed to get about 4,000 megawatts of power which are in the process of being obtained.

“So, until we get to that point, the challenges that Eskom is facing will keep hitting us and fortunately, they are not continuous. They keep recovering the units that fail from time-to-time,” he said.

Ramaphosa said investors understand the challenges and are appreciative of the measures and steps the government is taking to repair Eskom. 

“The unfortunate part is that it affects livelihoods. It also affects our companies. What we can say is that the problems are being addressed within the strategy that I announced. That strategy is being implemented, it's unfolding and we will soon see progress.

“There is progress, lots of positive things are happening in our economy. I know it’s too much to ask for patience from our people, but at the same time all I can say is that the problems are being addressed and they will soon be addressed in a much more positive way.”

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