Ramaphosa appeared before Members of Parliament (MP) in the National Assembly on Thursday, 29 September 2022, to answer a series of questions posed to him on a variety of issues. With Eskom showing no signs of suspending the rolling blackouts anytime soon, it probably came as no surprise that the embattled power utility’s failure to keep the lights on was on the agenda.
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) John Steenhuisen asked Ramaphosa why key members in his Cabinet – Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and his Public Enterprises counterpart Pravin Gordhan, have not been fired.
“The fact that [they] remain their positions, is a demonstration to the nation that you have clear confidence in them and are satisfied with their performance. Will you tell South Africans today, what level of sustained load shedding will get these ministers fired?,” Steenhuisen said.
RAMAPHOSA GRILLED OVER LOAD SHEDDING… AGAIN
In response to the question by Steenhuisen, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the current bouts of load shedding the country was experiencing was not “the willfull and planned intention” of anyone who works in the state system, including the Eskom executives themselves.
Ramaphosa admitted that in 2015, based on the information that he had, government was confident that load shedding would be a thing of the past, due to the construction of the Kusile and Medupi power stations. The two plants cost the taxpayer a whopping R163 billion and were set to be completed by 2015, but this is yet to happen.
“Many of us thought that these two power stations are really going to boost our energy generation and I must say, I stored a lot of confidence, even as I went to Medupi for the launch of one of those units.I genuinely did believe, even then, that we have found the solution to our energy problems. But lo and behold, where we are today – and it has not been the willfull and clearly planned intention of anyone that I work with. This has been a calamity of enormous proportions. Two weeks ago, to have 50% of our electricity generation capacity just collapsing, one after the other. It isn’t something that was planned by the minister or CEO”
President Cyril Ramaphosa
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