ITUMELENG MAFISA and NOXOLO MIYA
Joburg - Former Gauteng premier and Cope founder Mbhazima Shilowa says he believes that the military should have been deployed at Eskom power stations when allegations of sabotage first surfaced.
Shilowa was speaking on the sidelines on the third day of the ANC elective conference in Nasrec, south of Joburg. He said there were multiple factors affecting the success of Eskom, but welcomed the presence of the military outside the country’s power stations.
“I think that they should have done this earlier. Eskom is a strategic state company, and this should have been done earlier,” Shilowa said.
He said he believed that the move to have the military on site was not a political decision, but rather that former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter had failed to run Eskom effectively because of political pull-backs that made the success of the state utility difficult.
Eskom had plunged the country into serious levels of load shedding.
This had led to frustration from citizens and an ailing economy that could not function. Head of Economic Transformation, Mmamoloko Kubayi, said Eskom was a target for acts of sabotage. She said De Ruyter’s resignation was an opportunity to bring in new technologies and build renewed public confidence.
Meanwhile, Shilowa said he was disappointed that both ANC presidential candidates, Zweli Mkhize and Cyril Ramaphosa, had not magnified the changes that they would both bring to the country at their election as president.
“My only discomfort is that they both have not put forward. If I were to be elected, being the incumbent, I would talk about the things that I am going to change that would really take the movement and the country forward,” said Shilowa.
Shilowa is an ex-member of the ANC and was one of the few guests who were invited after a strenuous vetting process from the organisers of the conference.
The Star