Electricity Minister wants South Africans to donate braai coals to Eskom

Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has made an impassioned plea to South Africans, asking the nation to donate their braai coals to ailing parastatal Eskom.

He was visiting the Matla and Komati Power Stations when he made the request.

Earlier this week, Ramokgopa disclosed that Unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear power station will only return to service 45 days after the latest deadline of 23 July. The new target date of 13 September is a full 90 days after the original date of 8 June, when the 180-day outage was supposed to end.

This means, a shortage of at least 900 MW during the peak winter period.

ALSO READ: Koeberg 1’s planned availability during winter is off the table

South African’s don’t braai as much in winter

Ramokgopa, while acknowledging citizens had already been through enough of load shedding-induced trauma, begged for the nations understanding as government once again “trespassed on South African’s resilience”.

“We estimate that one bag of coal, per family ought to reduce the load shedding stages at least until the middle of winter,” he said.

He discouraged citizens from donating briquettes charcoal because it is not suited for the industrial strength generators, saying briquettes might even cause additional breakdowns.

“During the winter months, we noticed that South Africans tend to braai less than they would in summer months, but if you must braai, we encourage the use of wood so that you will be able to make your donation to Eskom,” said Ramokgopa.

ALSO READ: Christmas braai menu: Braai broodjies, lamb chops, and peri peri chicken

Acting Eskom CEO Calib Cassim has welcomed the electricity minister’s intervention saying this type of political interference was much more productive than just enabling wide scale looting and forcing the parastatal to provide feeding troughs for officials “that need to eat”.

“Eskom would essentially be able to free up additional capital for renewables if the existing paying customer base can also subsidise part of the coal supply needed to keep the lights on their homes,” said Cassim.

Both men agreed that wood-fired braais tasted better anyway, and by making South Africans subsidise their own coal supply, it would enable government to send more coal at cheaper prices overseas.

*This story is not in anyway true or accurate and was sponsored by White Monopoly Capital and groups exposing ‘things mainstream media doesn’t want you know,’ as part of our April Fools’ coverage.