SA’s energy plan more about ‘throwing money at issue than coming up with solutions’

This time round, they haven’t banned cigarettes, alcohol, open-toed shoes or cooked chicken, but the state of disaster regulations released yesterday might have an even greater long-term impact on South Africa because they allow the government to relax procurement and environmental laws.

Almost three weeks after President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the national state of disaster in response to South Africa’s energy crisis, regulations in terms of the Disaster Management Act were signed into law on Monday by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

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The objectives of the regulations:

• Streamlining and expediting application and decision-making procedures for regulatory processes related to energy generation projects, including designating a single department or institution to receive and coordinate the processing of applications or stipulating maximum timeframes for decision-making;
• Excluding upgrades, refurbishments, adjustments and repairs of existing energy infrastructure and existing generation, transmission and distribution facilities, from the provisions of the National Environmental Management Act, or any specific environmental management Act, or any regulations published in terms thereof, for the duration of the national state of disaster.

Dlamini-Zuma said under the new regulations, all spheres of government would work more closely with its social partners and Eskom to ensure availability, integrity and security of the electricity infrastructure.

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) advocate Stefanie Fick noted the new state of disaster regulations “appear to be intended to allow a quick contract with Karpowerships by fast-tracking or by-passing environmental authorisations, procurement rules, public participation and even legal challenges”.

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“The regulations confirm Outa’s concerns that the state of disaster will be used to remove regulatory provisions and oversight to enable the fast-tracking of unaffordable generation contracts,” said Fick.

“Outa is determined to continue our legal challenge to review the declaration of a national state of disaster and our challenge to the issuing of the Karpowerships’ generation licences by the National Energy Regulator.”

Both these matters are before court.

Part of the Government Gazette noted national, provincial and local spheres of government must, for the duration of the declared national state of disaster and within their available resources, “provide funds for this purpose, subject to affordability”.

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However, political analyst Goodenough Mashego said bringing this would affect service delivery because not all government functions were tied to the present energy crisis.

“Electricity is important, but the intervention by government should not be a one-way thing. It seems their plan is more about throwing money at the problem than actually coming up with solutions.”

Mashego added people who should manage the money to prevent looting were not on the cadre deployment list.

“Mass looting is expected. Cadres do not loot for personal benefit only, but also to fund the party they are in,” he said.

Energy planning

Energy specialist Lungile Mashele said South Africa still struggled with load shedding because of a lack of planning and accountability.

“This is why energy planning is done at a national level. Some of these initiatives, for example the 100 megawatts embedded generation, were announced almost two years ago.

“However, you can’t force the private sector to act with haste; a lot of their projects are still in development,” she said.

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“Other initiatives, like the debt relief programme, will only start having a positive impact next year.”

Mashego added that what SA needed was infrastructure.

“We need roads, schools, bridges. We need infrastructure that facilitates local and solid investment,” he said.

Meanwhile, the presidency accused the media of making a “gross misrepresentation” of Ramaphosa’s court papers.

Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said Ramaphosa’s affidavit, which stated the three spheres of government were not constitutionally responsible for supplying electricity, had been “grossly misrepresented”.

He said Ramaphosa was clarifying his constitutional powers and responsibilities, as well as those of other government bodies with regard to electricity provision in the country.

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– lungas@citizen.co.za. Additional reporting by Thapelo Lekabe.