Electricity minister Kgosientsho “Sputla” Ramokgopa shocked South Africans this week with his soft-shuffle at an ANC event in Soweto. Was the minister entrusted with solving South Africa’s electricity crisis really that oblivious as South Africa’s dance of death quickened, with Stage 5 and then 6 load-shedding following in quick succession, the economy braced for another hammer blow on a blue Monday morning?
His nimble two-step was one of those happenings that in itself is banal, but read in a political context can sway public opinion and win or lose elections. Not here in South Africa, obviously, where the bar for public outrage has been raised beyond measurement by successive ANC administrations.
However, one might be tempted to ask, whose tune is Ramokgopa dancing to?
The subtext of his comrade-dad dance is that he allegedly couldn’t care that his carefully laid plans to restore Eskom to at least the shuffling limp of the walking wounded have come to nothing. We are back where we started, with stage 6 load-shedding settling in even as we are assured Eskom is on the mend, if such a thing were possible. Or even desirable.
Ramokgopa brought all the enthusiasm and curiosity of the keen amateur to his new job, to which he was appointed in March. He did the obligatory rounds at Eskom’s power stations, dressed in a hard hat and overalls. Things didn’t seem all that bad, he mused.
After a quick look around, he assured himself and the nation that Eskom could be restored to its former glory. It’s no exaggeration that reviving the power utility, which is an article of faith for the ANC for which it is a bottomless pit for looting, has become a central plank of what’s called an emergency plan.
Ramokgopa is in his job today because the ANC convinced itself after the crisis presented by former CEO André de Ruyter’s infamous exit that a political solution was needed. This is because the party’s national executive committee (NEC) has an exaggerated faith in the ability of its dance partners to do things that are usually in the domain of knowledge and experience.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fudge to avoid upsetting the factional balance was to appoint Ramokgopa, but without giving him powers to do what it was assumed he had to do. That was ostensibly to drive the energy revolution that South Africa needs to tackle its related problems of load-shedding, unemployment, growth and foreign investment. With an ambitious climate commitment thrown in.
Even as Ramokgopa was squeezed into a camping stool around the table in the cabinet room at the Union Buildings, energy minister Gwede Mantashe, the country's “King Coal”, talked up the ancient art of coal-burning and let it be known he had no objection to being cast as a “coal fundamentalist”.
This served vested ANC interests in the related supply chain, but also resonated with a tendency that supported his South Africa first, energy-job security message. Tinging it with a suspicion of Western powers allegedly bullying South Africa to a green future strengthened his appeal to the NEC, ever distrustful of the West.
It’s no exaggeration that reviving Eskom, which is an article of faith for the ANC for which it is a bottomless pit for looting, has become a central plank of what’s called an emergency plan.
It’s no coincidence that the key legislation that would give Ramokgopa a real job has been stalled and is unlikely to get to parliament this year. The Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill, basically a blueprint to free up the sector and open it to competition, is sponsored by Mantashe. No rush there. And no one in a position of authority in cabinet to force Mantashe’s hand either.
The Integrated Resource Plan, which sets out how the country intends to fuel its electricity in coming years, is another area with which Ramokgopa does not have to interrupt his dancing to trouble himself. The last version, in 2019, is being updated, but few expect that it will tilt much away from Mantashe’s love affair with coal and nuclear.
Without a CEO since De Ruyter’s day, Eskom is a ship cut loose on the high seas. Except it’s not unmanned, with many on board for the ride, but few to venture down to the engine room.
Which leaves Ramokgopa with not a lot to do, except provide updates on Eskom, in which he states the obvious, while by omission pointedly avoiding stating the even more obvious, which is that Eskom is beyond saving in its present form. He’s the captain who’s forever spotting the mirage of land from the high seas of despair. Our despair.
In August, for example, he told the Mail & Guardian: “I’m trying to take time to say to you that what we are seeing, the improvement (in load-shedding) is not an act of God, this is people at work doing everything possible to make sure that we are solving this energy crisis.
“Of course, load-shedding is bad in all its elements, but we can say that we are able to maintain that permutation of three to zero or one to three’’ stages of load-shedding.
“And this is testament to the fact that this recovery is sustainable, this recovery is enduring. I think that is the message that I want to convey.”
This week, the message for stage 6 seemed different.
“Us as a team, we have taken the view that part of the reason we are where we are as a country in relation to the deterioration of the generating capacity was that we have not been sticking to planned maintenance, we have not been sticking to philosophy maintenance,” he told a briefing, before jetting off to Kenya for a summit on climate change.
He left us in the darkness with this ominous thought. “We are going to stick to planned and philosophy maintenance. We do accept that in the short term it’s going to result in the possibility of intensified load-shedding. That’s because ramped-up planned and philosophy maintenance is accompanied by an unplanned capacity loss factor.” Huh? Isn’t it good to know someone’s unplanning all this?
Also, in case you missed it, an ash-carrying chain broke underneath a boiler at Medupi on Monday morning. When else? Eskom’s team had to wait for the boiler to cool down before they could do any repairs. For the public, knowledge is power. But too little of it is a dangerous thing. Power, that is.
And philosophy maintenance? I dance therefore I am?
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