THE CALL by the Black Business Council (BBC) in declaring a national state of disaster on energy has received momentum.
The ruling party has also followed suite as the country faces electricity crisis, after its NEC lekgotla this past weekend.
BBC says the country has experienced rolling blackouts for 16 years; and pointed the finger to the ruling party saying, the reason the country still finds itself here is the result of the lack of political will from the African National Congress.
BBC hosted an energy Indaba in effort to try and mitigate electricity shortage, poor and ageing infrastructure, security, skills shortage and malfeasance faced by Eskom.
The council believes the state of disaster would allow the government to treat the electricity crisis as an emergency by allocating more resources to respond to the challenge.
Various experts in the energy sector although bemoaned the laxity from the State on this critical matter, they suggested solutions to resolve the crisis.
Remedial action, strengthen and empower the Eskom governance structures, improve procurements and safety, are some of the fundamental remedies in starting to deal with energy crises.
“People, professionals, entrepreneurs and a range of other people that happen to be black in this country, they have hope in us and I think that’s where we need to start from. In terms of how we then deal with Eskom, how do you deal with energy in terms of dealing with the security of energy in the country? These are some of the things that we are advancing,” says President of BBC, Elias Monage, during his address at the Indaba held at Parktown recently.
Monage also warned they will visit sites such as Richards Bay to check on how much coal has been exported to countries such as Germany, yet SA faces coal shortage.
Independent Energy Economist, Lungile Mashele says unfortunately the South African government for the last 16 years has refused to be accountable for what had been happening in terms of load shedding.
“We’ve been ushered from one crisis to the other and unfortunately, we might have reached presuppose of this disaster. I do join the calls of numerous people such as the BBC who are calling for a national state of disaster on the electricity crisis.
This is especially imperative. It is a call for regime change because of what has been happening,” she said in her address.
BBC believes the Energy White Paper it is preparing for Gvt, would aid to resolve what are practical and implementable short, medium and long term solutions that will resolve the matter permanently.
Former Eskom boss Jacob Maroga and now Erinite Energy Director, also called for national state of disaster and urged Government to treat the crises of the energy with urgency it deserves.
“We believe that we have reached a stage where we need more powerful levers and declaring a state of disaster is one of those levers because it will then allow for a faster turnaround on some of the key remedial actions as we’ve seen with Covid.
Number 2, strengthen and empower the Eskom governance structures to manage the state of disaster conditions, the governance of Eskom on what must be done to strengthen it so that they may work through the state of disaster,” says Maroga.
“An important point for this meeting is the layer that is outside of government which we call additional capacity has been mobilised and I believe engagements with people outside of government also enhance the options that we look at. There are certain external experts that we are borrowing from, project managers, legal experts and energy policy experts,” says the Chief Director at the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, Thabang Audat.
Ruse Moleshe- MD at RUBK (Pty) Ltd also believes the ‘sorry‘ state of affairs at Eskom should be averted and not filter down to other SOEs, as this could pose a serious economical consequence and instability in the country, a point that was echoed by Dr Zwanani Mathe, CEO at SA National Energy Development Institute.
Very irritated BBC -NW Province representative James Gadinabokao, threatened if Government does not listen, they will mobilise and take to the street, like it happened during apartheid.
“As black people, we are saying now it’s time for us to do exactly what we have done during apartheid to let the government know that we are not satisfied with the way they are driving or governing the country.
And the only language that they understand properly is when we toyi-toyi as we did with apartheid, it was not won in the boardrooms it was defeated in the streets, now we are going to the streets to force the government to implement things that we have suggested to them,” warned Gadinabokao.
Meanwhile, ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula insists the country’s load-shedding (energy) crisis would be speedily and efficiently resolved by imposing a national state of disaster.
He told a post-ANC NEC lekgotla press conference in Johannesburg on Tuesday this will help the government to focus on the challenge and implement decisions with speed.
The call for a declaration of a national state of disaster was first brought to the fore by ANC president, Cyril Ramaphosa while closing the party’s lekgotla on Monday evening.
The call drew immediate reservations from some quarters, with the EFF saying during Covid-19 such a declaration was abused and taxpayers’ money was allegedly stolen on a massive scale.
However, on Tuesday, Mbalula dug in his heels and said the country needs this measure so the crisis of load shedding could be addressed by the end of the year.
Among other benefits he said would be brought about by the declaration of a state of disaster would be easing the cumbersome process of procuring goods for the power utility.
“A state of disaster will help us to move with speed; the target of getting this done and dusted by end of the year can be achieved even faster.
“If you’ve got all hands on deck you address issues of procurement quite faster and then we mobilise resources where they are needed for intervention, particularly when it comes to maintenance.
“And then we got people with capacity, engineering and all of that to advise the command centre,” Mbalula said in justifying the call which he hinted would likely be implemented in the coming days or weeks.
Mbalula said they have been getting “contradictory” stories about the problem of load shedding so experts had to be roped in to help deal with the matter.
“We can’t speak as if we are experts, we didn’t become experts during Covid when a team of doctors under the Health Department were telling and educating us about the virus, not just a group of politicians coming together and defining themselves as virologists, we left it to them.
“So, our response to Covid was scientifically driven, so, our response to dealing with load shedding must be scientifically driven and informed by practitioners because somebody can be a good lawyer, but not good as an engineer.
“As a lawyer, you have good expertise of dismissing people at work, you know how to do it, but you rely on other people when it comes to engineering capacity.
“So, you need a combination of all of this, that is what we have directed (the) government to do in response to this (energy crisis).
“Our confidence that this will be done away with (this year) is informed by that. Urgency, focus through the command that meets almost weekly and examines what is happening
“(The) ad hoc approach is not helping; denial that we are in a crisis is not helping us, so shutdowns and all of that they are not helpful,” Mbalula said.
On the issue of Eskom being moved to the Department of Energy under Minister Gwede Mantashe, Mbalula said the ANC has given the government a clear mandate to do so.
At the present moment, Eskom falls under the Department of Public Enterprises which is politically headed by Minister Pravin Gordhan.
“The conference has given us a clear mandate, for instance, that Eskom must go to Energy (department), the president is working on those issues.
Image SLM (Former Eskom boss now Erinite Energy Director- Jacob Maroga- addressing delegates at the BBC energy Indaba held at Parktown).
