ANC must take the blame for Eskom

The ANC’s national spokesperson Pule Mabe must live in a twilight zone there in Luthuli House … at least if his statement on Wednesday attacking Eskom is anything to go by.

Everybody knows the power utility is a mess, Comrade Pule … but it is your mess as the ANC.

It is the inefficiency and looting by your cadres over the past two decades which has left us not only with the most expensive “new” coal-fired power stations in the world, but possibly also the worst designed and worst built ones, too.

Medupi and Kusile plants – which should be the jewels in the Eskom crown but which have still not been fully commissioned years after their projected completion dates – failed this week.

And, in doing so, proved that the programme to replace ageing power infrastructure has almost left us worse off than we were.

In attacking Eskom and implying that the collapse of the grid – which is what stage 4 load shedding is – is because of some nefarious political plot on the eve of elections, Mabe is acknowledging that, if there is truth to this, then our country’s intelligence and security services have once again failed spectacularly.

The timing would certainly not harm the ANC’s opponents in the upcoming polls, because all of them have been harping on about the government’s lack of delivery of basic services.

And it doesn’t get much worse than six hours a day of load shedding when it comes to
non-delivery.

Energy experts believe that South Africa is still paying the price for the deliberate neglect of the electricity generation and distribution networks, as some reports suggest, in order to make Eskom’s executives look good and qualify them for generous bonuses.

That we are still undergoing these blackouts suggests that we may have to come to terms with Eskom being a lost cause.