Ramaphosa, maestro of smoke and mirrors

As the nation flickers between light and dark, hope and despair, it is worth looking at the historical role President Cyril Ramaphosa played in all this.

Those who offered up their blind support did no real vetting of his record in office. Today, with the country in turmoil and the national grid in meltdown, the mood has changed.

As former president Jacob Zuma’s deputy, Ramaphosa’s responsibilities to “oversee the turnaround” of three core SOEs in 2015 — Eskom, SAA and the SA Post Office — have largely been papered over. For Eskom Ramaphosa would establish a “war room” and an advisory panel to implement a five-point plan to save the dilapidated, chaotic mess that provided 95% of the country’s electricity:

● Interventions over 30 days;

● Harnessing co-generation opportunities through contracts with the private sector;

● Accelerating substitution of diesel with gas in diesel plants;

● Launching an independent coal producer programme; and

● Managing demand through interventions within residential dwellings, public and commercial buildings and municipalities through retrofitting energy efficient technologies.

Advisory panels are Ramaphosa’s bread and butter. It is how he devolves responsibility down to an unaccountable collective. On March 18 2015, he announced their names — Anton Eberhard, Dolly Mokgatle, Bobby Godsell, Sy Gourah, Smunda Mokoena and a sixth person with an organised labour background TBA.

So far as the “war room” was concerned, it would comprise “the departments of energy, cooperative governance and traditional affairs, public enterprises, National Treasury, economic development, water and sanitation and Eskom, as well as technical officials”.

As it happened, there was already an advisory panel — the Energy Advisory Council — which reported to the minister of energy, but assurances were given the “war room” would not interfere with this.

It is remarkable how little formal reporting Ramaphosa and the government did on “war room” progress in 2015. In fact, the only way to track its progress is through oral question time in parliament and NCOP. Were it not for this mechanism — which the EFF wants to do away with — there would be almost nothing said anywhere.

In March he would tell parliament: “There will be light at the end of the tunnel ... challenges are being addressed ... we are taking decisive action.”

On June 10: “Notable progress has been made in turning around Eskom ... with the support of the war room in the presidency, progress has been made in implementation of government’s five-point plan.”

Notably: “We must dispel the myth that the people who run parastatals are ill-equipped to do so.” As evidence, the appointment of new Eskom CEO Brian Molefe was “a shot in the arm for Eskom ... I promise you, because I have seen, and many of us have seen, how he works and how he functions.”

In November 2016, Molefe resigned after a public protector report found links between him and the Gupta family.

On the Eskom board: “We are reviewing the quality of board members ... We are going to become more focused, look more introspectively at the skills base ... choose the best of the breed.”

One of the first things he did on being elected president was replace the entire Eskom board, the very collection that was “the best of the breed”.

Private-public partnerships were the future: “One of the other key things is how we bring in independent power producers (IPPS). We have signed agreements. We are going to rope them in so that they continue feeding the grid.” Five years later, IPPs do not yet have the go-ahead, at least none making a meaningful contribution to the power supply.

Today he says Eskom’s debt is “untenable”, and “further bailouts are putting pressure” on the fiscus. Back in 2015, money flowed like wine. Like the “new dawn”, the gulf between rhetoric and reality is substantial.

In September 2015, again before parliament: “In another 18 months to two years, you will forget the challenges we had with power and energy and Eskom ever happened.”

Over the first half of 2016, the “war room” and its effects on SOEs faded from view. In August 2016, Zuma announced he would again take the reins.

This week Eskom implemented stage 6 rolling blackouts — a new low. As in 2015, today’s crisis comes with more advisory panels and processes, new boards, more promises of IPPs and unbundling. Now there is a nine-point plan instead of five. And, of course, that plan is going great guns too, as we heard in the 2019 state of the nation address.

But, in the real world, Eskom continues to charge towards oblivion with ever-increasing speed, dragging the entire SA economy in its wake.

In March 2019, again before parliament, Ramaphosa reminisced about his days in charge of SOEs. He requested Zuma to shut down the “war room”: “What the war room never really got close to was the financial machinations that were happening at a corporate level

— we were looking more closely at keeping the lights on ... I had been appointed to head the war room, but at the same time, I realised — and I told [Zuma] — I am not able to wrap my arms around Eskom properly, to take effective decisions, because at every point, there was another entry of another idea, of other people.”

You’d never guess it from his glowing reports of 2015.

The brutal truth is that he was given real power, with which he achieved nothing, and has never been held to account for it. He is now playing the exact same game of smoke and mirrors.

The appointment of Brian Molefe was “a shot in the arm for Eskom ... I have seen ... how he works