We can’t afford to be kept in the dark

IT IS a case of too little too late for Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom to say sorry for the recent rolling blackouts that hamper the country’s economic recovery efforts.

There literally is no light at the end of the tunnel for Eskom, at least in the near future.

We are in for another dark week and possibly weekend, with the latest round of rolling blackouts.

The power generation system was severely constrained because of the breakdown of some units as well as a delay in the expected return to service of a unit at Medupi.

We have come to know the challenges at Eskom, including the alleged sabotage and tampering, damaging or destroying of electrical network infrastructure that was said to have led to last year’s unprecedented Stage 6.

But we would expect that at the very least we would not be sitting in the dark, on top of being locked up in our homes.

Eskom has missed a rare opportunity to use the lockdown to get its house in order while many businesses were barred from operating.

Gordhan has, like most of his Cabinet colleagues, been missing in action while the country’s economy continues to take a hard knock, which Eskom’s never-ending power crisis exacerbates.

When he finally made a public appearance recently, he told a news channel that operators at Eskom needed to up their game.

The statement falls short in inspiring business and public confidence in a country running out of funds, which have been used to bail out state-owned entities, including Eskom, and wasted through grand-scale corruption.

What Gordhan is not telling us is how long we should expect to be kept in the dark, literally and figuratively.

The least that South Africans deserve is transparency, especially when so much of their taxes have been squandered.

South Africans are fed up excuses and blame games.

Covid-19 has shown us that the government can deliver. The urgency we saw in the delivery of services to poor communities is what Gordhan and Eskom executives must show.

The time for hiding their heads in the sand must come to an end.

Or the electorate will surely bring their time to an end.

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