Ramaphosa lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land

Platitudes, promises and pie-in-the-sky – that’s all we seem to get from President Cyril Ramaphosa. But even by his waffling and fantasy standards, there was one promise he made in his Freedom Day speech which had the experts shaking their heads.

Referring to the current energy crisis – and even that term sounds euphemistic, given the huge damage load shedding is doing to an already fragile economy – Ramaphosa said: “When we emerge from this crisis, our energy system will have been fundamentally transformed. It will be more stable, more reliable, more affordable and more sustainable.”

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It will not be hard to make our national grid more stable, more reliable and more sustainable… because the bar is so low, even small improvements will be noticed.

Ask yourself how it feels to hear that it is “only” stage 2 and instead of higher ones… Yet, how on earth – as opposed to Planet Dream Land on which Ramaphosa seems to be spending much of his time – do you manage to make electricity “more affordable”?

Eskom was given an outrageous 18% tariff increase (or about three times our current rate of inflation) but it wanted even more – something around 35% – to make a dent in its financial losses.

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If the country is going to have to refurbish coal-fired power stations or even bring in vast new renewable energy projects – never mind the ruinously expensive Karpowership floating generation idea – does the president think this will come cheaply?

We have certainly been kept in the dark, like mushrooms, and now our leader is ladling on the manure. Perhaps that is why our electricity minister has, seemingly, been pushed into the background – because he was too open and honest about the horrible load shedding winter which lies ahead of us.

Marie Antoinette-like, our president seems to be saying: Let them eat hope.

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