Kgosientsho Ramokgopa takes aim at Eskom detractors

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa used his weekly briefing to take a swipe at Eskom's detractors and campaign for the governing party ahead of the country's seventh general elections.

This as he repeatedly praised Eskom's team while the power utility marked another significant milestone — breaching the 70% mark on the energy availability factor (EAF) for the first time since 2021.

Ramokgopa provided an update on the implementation of the energy action plan at Kusile power station on Monday. This comes as the country marks 47 days without load-shedding ahead of the winter season. Eskom previously revealed it hoped to pin power cuts at stage 2 during winter.

The minister used the platform to provide an overview on the situation at the power station, which has moved from being one of Eskom's problem stations to among the best performers, and to speak about the utility's overall performance.

“I'm happy to say to the country the EAF of Eskom has breached the 70% mark. We're at 70.78%. That is significant. The last time we achieved this was in August 2021,” he said.

The EAF for the year to date stands at 59.92%, he said.

Ramokgopa confirmed the utility managed to reduce unplanned outages by 4,000MW since April 26 as a result of planned maintenance.

While he heaped praise on Eskom staff and said the utility's turnaround was “orchestrated” rather than sudden, he also used his briefing to take aim at its naysayers. One of those seems to be former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, who recently claimed Eskom was able to keep the lights on by “pouring money into diesel at a rate of knots”, according to News24.

Ramokgopa denied this, sharing figures that showed that the utility burned diesel at a lower rate or not at all between May 5 and 12 compared to the same period last year.

“We have seen in the public domain there are those who are beginning to find their voice. They've been here at Eskom [and] were meant to achieve these numbers [but] because of exceptional levels of incompetence they've not been able to achieve this.

“When it is achieved, they are finding their voice. It's important that we dampen those voices, that we're able to illustrate in numbers the kind of exceptional achievement that has been attained by competent men and women.”

Taking it further, Ramokgopa accused Eskom's detractors of “writing books” while the team focused on “keeping the lights on”.

“If you have not proceeded past matric and you have not done maths, you can be the leader of a political party [but] schooling is very important because it helps you to understand the figures,” he said.

“The point I'm making is that it's a call for help because we'll not allow ourselves to be bashed and almost defenceless when these men and women have invested so much.

“I'm talking from a political [point of view]. This is not an Eskom story. It's a story of the sixth administration. We have disarmed those who thought they would weaponise load-shedding going to May 29. They'll tell you it is sudden [or that] it's diesel.”

Ramokgopa is due to visit Kendal power station next, one of the utility's problematic stations.

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