Backlash on privatising Eskom

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa faced a backlash yesterday over the crisis at Eskom as notions of privatising it were rejected.

Cosatu vowed to take to the streets today to oppose privatisation and job losses at the state power utility.

Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi said South Africans should not accept the fact that Eskom went from Stage 2 load shedding to Stage 4 overnight; people within Eskom needed to be held accountable.

“It is not even winter, so we don’t use so much electricity,” said Losi.

She said South Africans should be given a report which detailed all of the events that led to the crisis.

The ANC and SACP also vowed to oppose any attempt to privatise Eskom.

This came after Ramaphosa announced during his State of the Nation address last week that the government was considering unbundling Eskom into three entities: generation, transmission and distribution.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule said people were worried that unbundling could mean privatisation.

Speaking at the 107th birthday celebration yesterday of the widow of the late struggle stalwart Moses Kotane, Rebecca Kotane, Magashule said the ANC top six had met leaders of the NUM who were concerned about privatisation at Eskom.

“We told the NUM we understand their worry about retrenchments. We said our position was that there would be no retrenchments and there would never be privatisation,” he said.

SACP first deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila said at the same event that his party was behind Cosatu’s strike, which would take place in all provinces.

“The state Eskom is in is largely due to mismanagement, poor governance, corruption and state capture,” said Mapaila, adding something could be done to prevent load shedding.

He said the new leadership was blackmailing the state into handing Eskom to the private sector.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told MPs that they were fixing Eskom. He admitted Medupi and Kusile plants were unable to rescue Eskom as they were poorly designed.