CAIPHUS KGOSANA | Negativity aside, there is light at the end of the tunnel

I and many other columnists spend an inordinate amount of time having a go at President Cyril Ramaphosa and his party — and rightly so. The governing party has single-handedly ruined almost everything it touches, plunging the country into a deep economic, political and social crisis.

I mean, how do you explain the weekly fatal shootings at taverns? None of the security apparatchiks in charge, from the police to intelligence heads, can figure out what’s going on. In this country we are forced to accept as the norm things other nations would never tolerate. No minister of police or intelligence, no national police commissioner or state security head would stay in their post in the face of such security risk failures, and the absence of arrests and successful prosecutions.

But I thought I’d use this week’s column to heap some praise. Ramaphosa’s announcement on Monday night of a grand plan to bring about an end to load-shedding and stabilise Eskom is impressive. Yes, it will hinge on implementation — a constant stumbling block for successive ANC administrations — but allow me to view the cup as half-full.

The cap on embedded generation is completely gone. This means private companies wanting to invest in new power generation can do so unencumbered, without having to go through a lengthy licensing process. They only have to register with the regulator and comply with technical requirements for grid connection and environmental legislation. 

This is huge. It means Ramaphosa has twice bulldozed his energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, who favoured a ridiculously low 10MW allowance for energy projects that require no licensing. Mantashe is an obstinate ideologue who believes in big state despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Ramaphosa’s announcement on Monday night of a grand plan to bring about an end load-shedding and stabilise Eskom is impressive. Yes, it will hinge on implementation — a constant stumbling block for successive ANC administrations — but allow me to view the cup as half full.

Dropping the threshold for private power generation will open up billions in private sector investment in infrastructure (think of all those construction jobs) and create a new electricity market free of Eskom’s rigidity and incompetence. Smart cities such as Cape Town already have tenders out to acquire additional electricity from independent power producers. The separate transmission company being created out of Eskom will have ready-made customers wheeling to clients eager to wean themselves off Eskom.

Stand by for public statements and gnashing of teeth from leftist fantasy peddlers decrying “the privatisation of the energy sector” and destruction of coal workers’ jobs. Yawn! 

After that strike, my sympathy levels for coal workers are hovering at about zero. The transition to renewables can’t happen quickly enough.

Ramaphosa also announced the doubling of Bid Window 6 capacity under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Programme (REIPPP) to 5,200MW. Environment minister Barbara Creecy is cutting down the red tape associated with environmental impact assessments for solar facilities, which will reduce approvals from 300 to 60 days.  Independent power producers will be allowed to get around local content requirements for acquisition of critical components. A request for proposals for battery storage is going out in September and Eskom’s critical maintenance budget is being increased.

Peter Bruce, a former editor and columnist I greatly respect, is sceptical.

“It was short on detail: no deadline and no new generation targets. They were in his early drafts but perhaps wisely dropped at the last minute. But it was complex, and he is going to rely on the same warring ministers who have got him into trouble to get him out of it,” Bruce wrote in BusinessLIVE of the presidential address on energy.

This is true. Ramaphosa is going to face some headwind from within his own cabinet, party and alliance structures. Mantashe told the Mail & Guardian that Andre de Ruyter is not the right man for the Eskom job; he wants control of the entity. The president appeased him by agreeing to set up Eskom 2, presumably under the energy department. I’m yet to hear a more ridiculous idea. Where are they going to find the money to fund another state behemoth? Enoch Godongwana must tell his boss and colleague the truth.

Look, Ramaphoria died at the altar of incisiveness. It was buried under the dollar-stuffed couches of Phala Phala (by the way, Mr President, you still owe us an explanation for that mess).

But as far as national addresses go, this was golden. The biggest hurdle now is bureaucratic inertia. Ramaphosa must personally monitor implementation on a daily basis and ruthlessly deal with any minister or government official who can’t do their job or stands in the way of this critical progress.

SA is too big and too important an economy to be suffering regular blackouts.