‘He saved taxpayers millions but will not solve the energy crisis’: SA on Ramaphosa cancelling Davos trip

President Cyril Ramaphosa might have saved taxpayers money by cancelling his trip to  Davos on Sunday to attend to the power crisis, but politicians and some citizens have no hope this will avert rolling blackouts.

On Sunday presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya announced Ramaphosa cancelled a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to address energy generation problems at Eskom causing load-shedding. The forum is set to run from Monday until Friday.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba was not confident cancelling the trip would stop worsening load-shedding.

“We are not fools, President Ramaphosa has been ‘solving’ Eskom wars since December 2014. We remember how many times he cancelled international trips, including a trip to a UN summit. But this does not solve the power crisis.

“The more he communicates about solving Eskom’s problems, the worse it gets,” Mashaba told TimesLIVE.

He said Eskom’s problems were not going to get better as long as the ANC was in charge. He said he was, however, happy about the money saved.

“What we can appreciate as a country is that he saved us millions by cancelling the trip but it does not mean the president will solve the energy crisis.”

DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia said it was a good thing Ramaphosa cancelled the trip, but citizens needed a detailed plan on how he will solve problems at the state-owned power utility.

“We need to know what he is going to do. What is the plan? Across what time frame and where is the money going to come from?

“The president has in the past 12 years been talking tough about issues at Eskom. He has cancelled trips to attend to the crisis and instituted advisory boards and the net result of that has been stage 6 load-shedding,” he said.

Since last Wednesday, Eskom has implemented stage 6 load-shedding, saying this was due to severe capacity constraints.

Here is what some people had to say on social media: