Ramaphosa’s opponents have no plan either
In a recent interview, former student leader Mcebo Dla’mini said: “SA is a movie. We live in a drama. It is a series. Every day you will be shocked by something new. We have even forgotten what shocked us two weeks ago. It is not normal. We are a failed state. The sooner we accept that we do not have leaders ... we have people who are masquerading as leaders.”
SA has a leadership crisis at all levels. Starting at the top, President Cyril Ramaphosa has no plan for an economy whose GDP per capita has not increased since 2006. He has no plan to end the power blackouts. He is winging it on the economy and Eskom. In an irrelevant sideshow, none of the people running against Ramaphosa to become president of the ANC has provided a plan for the economy or Eskom. They repeat irrelevant ANC resolutions.
The National Treasury says there cannot be new spending unless there are tax increases or budget cuts. But there are double standards when it comes to climate finance. The government has no problem accumulating more foreign currency loans signing an $8.5bn (R150bn) just energy transaction the most dangerous form of development financing. When it comes to spending on the basic income grant, the Treasury asks where the money will come from. With climate finance, it does not matter.
Global supply-side shocks are fading, and SA is on the brink of stage 6 power blackouts that will further reduce demand. In such an economy it is crazy that there is even talk that the Reserve Bank could increase interest rates by 100 basis points on Thursday.
After two months I have lost faith in the new Eskom board to bring an end to the power blackouts. Chair Mpho Makwana has asked the public for 90 days for the board to understand the issues. “My appeal to the people of SA is, I know it is painful but let us let the facts and figures dictate how we turn things around,” he says.
Since October 10 Russia has been bombing Ukraine’s power grid. Last week Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of “energy terrorism” and said 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure had been damaged. In SA, which is not at war, Eskom regularly has up to 45% of its generation capacity unavailable due to planned and unplanned breakdowns. This is our energy terrorism.
As recently as June 2020 Eskom had an energy availability factor of 72%. Since then its clueless top management, led by Andre de Ruyter, has wrecked the utility’s power plants. According to the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research’s latest facts and figures, Eskom shed 13,804GWH of energy from 2007 to September 2022, a period of 15 years and nine months.
There are two ways of slicing this data. First, according to political leadership: the period since Ramaphosa became president in 2018 accounted for 84.2% of the energy shed since 2007. The “nine wasted years” under Jacob Zuma about double the time that Ramaphosa has been president
accounted for 11.1% of the energy shed since 2007. Zuma kept the lights on.
Second, according to management leadership, the short period since De Ruyter became CEO in January 2020 accounted for 73% of the energy shed since 2007. The period from January to September 2022 accounted for 41.7% of all energy shed since 2007.
The new board must stop listening to Eskom’s propaganda and raising trivial issues that deflect attention from the incompetence of its top management, led by De Ruyter. They must fire De Ruyter.
The irony is that the people who say race should not matter are the ones who make this about race. The people who shout about the need for “consequence management” are the ones who say there must be no consequences for De Ruyter’s mismanagement of Eskom.