A month into 2023 and it is clear Eskom and the government have not adopted the new-year new-me mantra.
The actions taken when Eskom escalated load-shedding to stage 6 for days and National Energy Regulator of SA granted the power utility a massive tariff hike effective from April 1, underscored that South Africans were in for a year of suffering.
This relentless bout of blackouts has already borne economic impact.
A study by the Small Enterprise Finance Agency found 71% of SMMEs had suffered harm because of load-shedding and required alternative power sources to continue operations.
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So it was refreshing to note the debilitating effects of recent events have woken political parties from their slumber and sparked a flurry of fightback strategies.
In the first of the activities, prominent South Africans, including three political parties, a trade union and business owners, want government to stabilise the supply of electricity by the end of this week or face legal action for contravening its duty to provide energy.
The group comprising, among others, the UDM, Build One SA, IFP, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and policy analyst Lukhona Mnguni await a response from public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom boss Andre de Ruyter on their failure to act.
The attempt to hold government and its power utility accountable is a two-pronged effort: a legal challenge on Monday to stop the implementation of the tariff increases.
There are a host of reasons for our energy crisis, from the constrained system, to the self-serving manipulated agenda to benefit a select few for personal financial and political gain.
In addition to the court action, the DA will march to ANC headquarters Luthuli House on Wednesday. This march is directed at the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment, which the DA contends is directly responsible for the energy crisis we are in.
In response President Cyril Ramaphosa seemed to buckle under public dissent and cancelled his trip to Davos for the World Economic Forum, where the issues of persistent load-shedding and the thorny issue of greylisting took centre stage.
The cancellation, SA hoped would lead to some intervention, but it became unnervingly evident Ramaphosa’s week of crisis meetings failed to come up with any short-term plans to avert the disaster.
Eskom on Sunday advised South Africans to brace for permanent outages fluctuating between stage 2 and 3 for the next two years. This, they say, is to give it time to address maintenance issues and provide a predictable schedule for the public.
There are a host of reasons for our energy crisis, from the constrained system, to the self-serving manipulated agenda to benefit a select few for personal financial and political gain.
Therefore the solutions to reverse the crisis we find ourselves in must be multi-pronged, united and simultaneous. But more than anything, it needs to achieve tangible results.
The actions by political parties, trade unions and civic organisations are more than welcome. The threat of legal action is proactive in forcing government to act.
But at the risk of being cynical, political parties need to have the people’s interests and the country’s economic well-being at the core of their action.
The last thing the nation needs, is to be victims of an unscrupulous power play in the chessboard of political point-scoring.
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