Ramaphosa defends decision to cancel Davos trip to deal with energy crisis

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa addressing the ninth Free State ANC elective conference on Sunday. File photo.
Image: Denvor de Wee.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has hit back at criticism that his decision not to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to instead deal with the energy crisis amounted to nothing.

“I see today in some newspapers they say all the consultations have amounted to nothing, but they have amounted to a lot,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.

He was addressing the closing session of the ninth Free State ANC elective conference at Imvelo Safari Lodge in Mangaung.

The Sunday Times reported Ramaphosa spent last week in crisis meetings that failed to come up with short-term plans to relieve South Africans of crippling load-shedding.

Those who attended said government’s latest briefings were nothing more than an update on Ramaphosa’s turnaround plan announced last July.

The plan is set to take at least two years to implement.

Adding to frustrations, Eskom confirmed last week it had not yet hired a firm to recruit a replacement for CEO André de Ruyter, who announced his resignation more than a month ago.

The meetings came after Ramaphosa cancelled an important visit to the WEF in the Swiss resort last Sunday.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) recently  granted Eskom a tariff increase of 18%, which has South Africans up in arms and political parties seeking court interventions, from April 1.

On Sunday Ramaphosa said: “Eskom’s historically inadequate maintenance and delayed investment in building new power stations is the main reason why we are where we are.

“We have load-shedding, which understandably is making people angry and frustrated and is negatively impacting on livelihoods, the health of our people, food production and the economy.

“ People are losing their businesses. Many are reporting their businesses are failing because of load-shedding.”

He said the problems started in 1998 when government was told by Eskom it needed to add capacity to the grid and “that was neglected”.

“In the course of time maintenance was stopped at our power stations.

“The stations were driven hard, so hard that it is almost like your vehicle. If you have a vehicle and you don’t send it for services and maintain it, it will break at some point and this is exactly where we are.

“ Our grid capacity is short of 6,000 megawatts and we have been working very hard. We have put in place an energy plan, which I announced last July, and the process of adding more capacity with the measures, be it renewable energy and even emergency energy, is underway.

“I said as early as 2019 that we need to embark on emergency power. The process was started but was interrupted by court challenges because it was felt it was flawed and there challenges,  and that is trapped in legal processes.

“But we have been making a great deal of progress in unblocking the regulations. Processes have been put in place so we can remove all the lock jams so power can be brought onto the grid.”

Unfortunately, he said, “building power stations and adding more capacity takes time”.

“ We have been busy with two power stations, Medupi and Kusile, and we started building them in a hurry after we lost time from 1998.

“When we finally woke up to the reality that the increased population and growing economy was going to require more energy, we had really out of time and engineers who were supposed to manage everything internally.

“ In the end we have had to pay almost double for the two mega power stations we built. There are design flaws and that is why stations have run into difficulties.”

Ramaphosa said a combination of a number of things have brought South Africa to where it is now.

“We reached a point where we got to stage 6 load-shedding and that is what made our people frustrated, and I understand that.

“We are ensuring there is sufficient diesel for Gourikwa and Ankerlig power stations so megawatts can be brought onto the system while those stations taken out for maintenance and repairs are brought back one by one.

“We are also beginning to purchase power from countries that have more energy and megawatts. We also gone to companies that have installed more capacity to bring that in.”

Weighing in on the energy crisis, Ramaphosa concedes that "it should have never reached the level which it did. I did see some reports that say that these consultations have amounted to nothing. They have amounted to something." @TimesLIVE pic.twitter.com/weZe8tGNs2

He said government was cutting red tape hampering it from implementing critical measures to end load-shedding.

“There’s been a lot of red tape in the system and we are bringing in experts and engineers who had either left Eskom or are scattered all over. We have made a call they should come back to assist.

“We are going ahead with restructuring Eskom so we can reposition it.

“Of course we are all frustrated and we receive a further blow from Nersa to increase tariffs by 18%, which adds to the frustrations.”

He said his government has listened to its citizens.

“I have been spending a lot of time meeting with role players, including trade unions, business, religious leaders and community-based organisations, and all have come forward with good suggestions.

“ For instance, social groups have said: ‘President, let’s have solar panels all over the country. Let us install those.’ Treasury has been finalising how we can have solar panels installed and how people can be supported to have the panels.

“We have been talking to people also about tariffs and we are looking into this issue. I have personally said to Eskom: ‘It would be an injury to our people if we implement the 18% increase when we are going through load-shedding. Suspend it for now. The Eskom board is going to discuss that. The tariff was decided by an independent agency at the request of Eskom because Eskom needs to finances to generate the power we all need.

“ We recognise and see the hardships our people are going through. We are alive to those hardships and we are doing everything we can to resolve this. There will be a number of initiatives we embark on that we will talk about in time.”

He said role players also made suggestions with regard to municipal debt.

“Our municipalities owe Eskom almost R65bn. This is the R65bn Eskom needs to continue generating energy and they have come up proposals so we can solve this problem solved and encourage our people to pay.”

He said the challenges South Africans face are challenges government is facing.

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