Eskom crisis is a political problem

IT SHOULD no longer be acceptable for anyone to mention the name of former president Thabo Mbeki, alongside the problems at Eskom and the so-called load shedding.

So-called, because the problems with the electricity supply in South Africa now, have more to do with political will or lack of it than technical complications.

I would even go further and say former president Jacob Zuma should be excluded when scapegoats for load shedding are needed in the media and PR for President Cyril Ramaphosa.

It should not be forgotten that by 2004, the government of Mbeki made allowances for Eskom to expand.

These movements, as part of the public apology by the former statesman, for the “delay” in deciding to respond to warnings about possible lack of capacity for electricity supply, were followed by solid plans for the nuclear 1 project.

The nuclear 1 project was a good commitment by the Mbeki administration to right the wrongs of the past, as it was also the first and only apology by any government head, since perhaps 1910, to date.

But these noble plans were cast aside by the Polokwane group in their excitement to put Zuma into power.

The Polokwane group also got rid of the Scorpions which could have been a good match for building mafia and syndicates, as well as the subsequent state capture.

When Ramaphosa joined the Zuma administration in 2014, he, as deputy president, oversaw the business of government which included Eskom until 2018. He also made bold and false plans to end load shedding in 2015.

But what can absolve Zuma was the initiative to commission the construction of nuclear generational capacity with Russia which was mysteriously cancelled by the legal system of this nation.

That this cancellation was more necessary than ending load shedding should be what the detractors of Mbeki should be pondering.

What is evident, however, is the fact that we have a real charlatan and chameleon in Ramaphosa, because of the way he has dealt with the Eskom issue irrespective of the political circumstances that required navigation.

To be fair, load shedding became a deliberate ANC political technique in both good and bad ways. For the political opponents of Ramaphosa within the ANC, Eskom became a perfect platform to destabilise the country and to get back at the arrogant and white-owned big businesses that liquidated their financial assets in off-shore accounts instead of investing them in government plans for infrastructure and where corruption made no guarantees of returns.

But for Ramaphosa and his trusted friends within the ANC, Eskom became a tool for both population management (blackmail) and political security in the ANC, and then for the ANC in 2024.

As a result, Ramaphosa and his advisers decided to bring in a white person – first make load shedding acceptable to ever-complaining whites and their ilk, and to the ever-toyitoying or protesting blacks, etc, and secondly, as a front for the incompetency of the comrades.

Therefore Andre de Ruyter was never meant to take any credit for ending load shedding – his job was to be used as a white face and the elements of sabotage within Eskom from the Struggle days were there for that desire.

The plan was always to then bring a black person with political appeal to the ANC and public to mysteriously end or reduce load shedding, which would convince the gullible voters that things are getting better.

De Ruyter, however, either knew this or came to learn it later on and sought to make sure he came out of it with his integrity intact – which is probably why he ended by spilling the beans.

But the way the ANC and others have attacked De Ruyter, as well as how white people have defended his failures, show that this is a political problem made feasible by racial disharmony and stupidity in the citizens, who should be working together to change their circumstances.

More disgusting, however, is how black politicians attacked a messenger like De Ruyter instead of going after the criminals.

But this energy doesn’t exist for other things, especially for service delivery to their people most affected by inequality and lawlessness, and their comrades implicated in corruption.