Ramaphosa faces heat over crisis at Eskom

President slammed for damaging outages

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday faced a political backlash over the crisis at Eskom, as the ANC, SACP and Cosatu pushed back against any possibility of privatisation of the embattled power utility.

Opposition parties took turns in criticising Ramaphosa in Parliament over the economically damaging power outages, while Cosatu prepared to take to the streets today to oppose privatisation and job losses at Eskom.

Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi said South Africans should not accept the fact that it went from stage two load shedding to stage four overnight and that people within Eskom needed to be held accountable.

“Within Eskom there are people

responsible for the planning and daily operations of the utility. They are supposed to know because I am sure there are quality-control measures put into place, and people are paid to ensure proper functionality. It is not even winter, so we don’t consume as much electricity,” said Losi.

She said South Africans should be given a report on events surrounding the crisis.

The ANC and SACP also vowed to oppose any attempt by the government to privatise Eskom. This comes after Ramaphosa announced during his State of the Nation Address last week that the government was considering unbundling Eskom into three separate sub-entities: generation, transmission and distribution.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule said people were concerned that this could mean privatisation.

Speaking yesterday at the 107th birthday celebration of the widow of the late Struggle stalwart Moses Kotane – Rebecca Kotane – Magashule said the ANC Top Six had met leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers who were concerned about privatisation.

“We told them that our position is that there will be no retrenchments at Eskom and that there will never be privatisation of Eskom,” he said.

SACP first deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila said the party was behind Cosatu’s strike.

Mapaila accused former Eskom executives of looting the power utility, and said the new leadership was blackmailing the state into handing it to the private sector.

In Parliament yesterday, the DA, EFF, UDM and other parties said Eskom was in crisis. But Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told MPs that Eskom was being fixed, and an independent audit would be conducted at all power stations.

He admitted that Medupi and Kusile plants were poorly designed. | Additional reporting by Chulumanco Mahamba and Siphumelele Khumalo