Cyril Ramaphosa looks on during his inauguration as South African President, at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, on May 25, 2019. (Photo by Yeshiel PANCHIA / POOL / AFP)
Why on earth did President Cyril Ramaphosa plan a trip to Egypt when South Africa is in crisis with power outages and severe flooding?
The official answer was that he was in North Africa to attend today’s inaugural session of the “Aswan Forum for Sustainable Peace and Development” – but late yesterday he cancelled the trip to return home.
Strengthening ties with other countries is good, but the president needs to be back home in the trenches, coming up with solutions to fix the country, which has been plunged into darkness and uncertainty following the implementation of an unprecedented round of stage 6 load shedding.
The president’s focus must be on what is happening in his backyard. Heavy flooding has wreaked havoc across large parts of the country, while Eskom introduced stage 6 load shedding – which allows for up to 6,000MW to be cut from the national grid – for the first time on Monday evening. Prior to this, we have never experienced more than stage 4 load shedding.
The latest round of rolling blackouts puts more pressure on our struggling economy, severely denting business and consumer confidence. Retail activity will also be hit hard ahead of the festive season. It’s not looking good.
Perhaps economist Dr Thabi Leoka summed up the dire situation best while talking to Bruce Whitfield on Radio 702 on Monday evening: “I’m tired. South Africa is a very tiring country. One problem after another. You find yourself in a place, digging yourself out of a hole. With taxpayers’ money. Hard-earned money to a state entity.”
We need decisive leadership to deal with the power crisis, Mr President. You know what you need to do.
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