When Eskom ramps up load shedding to stage 6, one wonders whether President Cyril Ramaphosa genuinely intended to tackle the power crisis with urgency, or it was a decision to make him look like he was doing something with the establishment of the Ministry of Electricity.
Ramaphosa’s justification was that Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s “primary task will be to significantly reduce the severity and frequency of load shedding as a matter of urgency.”
Eight months on, we know that Ramokgopa failed in both tasks since his appointment in March. Data released by Load Shedding Notifier shows that South Africa has had more days of stage 6 load shedding in 2023 than in any other year, including days of stage 5 in 2022 and 2023 combined.
Just a week ago, Eskom announced Stage 5 and 6 because of the loss of four generating units, the need to replenish the emergency generation reserves and increased “planned maintenance”.
“Breakdowns are currently at 16 784MW of generating capacity while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 4 987MW.
Over a period of 24 hours, a generation unit each at Camden, Duvha and Kendal was returned to service.
In the same period, a generating unit each at Duvha, Grootvlei, Kendal and Matla power stations was taken offline for repairs.The delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Hendrina, Kendal, Matimba and Matla Tutuka power stations is also contributing to the current capacity constraints,” read its statement.
No amount of reasoning can be enough to justify the continued power cuts especially when, a false sense of hope was created with Ramakgopa’s appointment.
Remember this is the man we were told will not sleep so long as the power cuts are with us.
Instead, Ramakgopa became the man that danced his way to Stage 6 load shedding during the ANC’s election manifesto review at Dobsonville Stadium in Johannesburg earlier this month while the taxpayer, who pays his salary, was bracing for the pain of being plunged into darkness for prolonged periods.
That South Africans’ patience is waning is becoming evident by the day and Ramaphosa knows this could be disastrous for his party’s prospects to retain power next year. Maybe by switching the ANC’s own lights off, only then will they wake up. But it will be too late.
Cape Times