Load shedding: ‘Mantashe must shoulder blame’ for Eskom’s woes

Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) Gwede Mantashe must be held to account for the electricity crisis South Africa finds itself in, according to independent energy research consultant Hilton Trollip.

This as many parts of the country have been plunged into darkness over the last couple of days, thanks to stage 6 load shedding which was implemented by Eskom over the weekend.

Speaking to The Citizen on Monday, Trollip said several Independent Power Producers (IPPs) have been raising their hands for a while now, begging to be allowed onto the country’s national energy grid.

This after President Cyril Ramaphosa last year overruled Mantashe, who is also considered to be one of his key political allies, by announcing that private companies will be able to generate their own power of up to 100MW without a licence.

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Trollip said that currently all that Eskom can do to prevent a complete collapse of the grid is to ensure that maintenance at its old power stations happens promptly.

Mantashe must take responsibility

He stressed that with the country’s Electricity Act clearly giving the Minister of DMRE the responsibility of securing the country’s electricity needs and planning its energy future, Mantashe must shoulder the blame for the crisis.

“Among other things, the minister’s responsibility is also to appoint board members who then appoint CEOs, and Eskom has had 10 CEOs in 10 years before Andre de Ruyter… This just confirms the huge instability at the power utility.

“The minister has failed to get additional energy onto the grid, despite President Ramaphosa having signed agreements to buy electricity from renewable energy companies in 2018, but today Mantashe has just delayed the whole process,” he said.

Trollip said stage 6 load shedding, which the country currently finds itself in, is not something that just came along yesterday, but is a culmination of years of dysfunction.

“Because the power comes from Eskom, people say it is an Eskom problem, but the truth of the matter is that we do not have enough generating units.

“Out of the 15 coal-fired power stations, we only have two new ones in Medupi and Kusile, which are also placed under enormous pressure,” Trollip said.

Slow pace of IPP integration

Mark Swilling, Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at the University of Stellenbosch, also accused Mantashe of dragging his feet with respect to approvals for renewable energy sources.

He questions the reasons behind how bid windows for renewable grid integrations have been dragged out, saying they could have been opened much sooner, which would have led to a significant contribution to the country’s energy needs.

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“The problem is that these projects take at least two years to build, so we are in load shedding for the next two years at least but now with a massive rush to build large amounts of renewables. Do we have the capacity and are the suppliers available. Because there’s lots of other competitors for that equipment? So, the rush now to build more renewables is the correct decision, because we don’t really have any other option,” he said.

What can Eskom do now?

Swilling is of the opinion that the power utility’s plan should be threefold:

• Preventing a further decline in energy availability.
• Supporting the construction of renewables as fast as possible.
• Once there is new generation capacity, to take some of the old generation capacity off the grid to properly fix and rehabilitate.

“You can’t take more off the grid now in order to properly fix the generation capacity that should have been procured in 2015 and onwards.

“We find ourselves in this situation because of the politicians who basically gave the instructions to Koko, Molefe and the ministers of Public Enterprise and Finance during those times. Pravin Gordhan, who was minister of Finance then, can’t really be blamed because he was the only person who stood in the way of the nuclear deal,” Swilling said.

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He said what the country needs is one ministry of energy, instead of having responsibility for Eskom spread across two separate ministries of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) and Public Enterprise, as is the case at the moment.

“Gordhan also published a road map in 2019, which did provide a framework, but unfortunately a lot of what he recommended as the person responsible for Eskom as minister for public enterprises, is dependent on the minister of energy which is Gwede Mantashe.

“We need a minister of energy in charge of energy policy and Eskom and that would be the real solution to the problem at the political level,” he said.

Should De Ruyter get the sack?

Swilling stressed that sacking current Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter would serve little purpose, saying a new person would take at least another year to figure out what the job actually entails.

“Calls for De Ruyter’s resignation because things are not working is totally ridiculous and actually a form of insanity, because what we have is an Eskom team doing their utmost best under extremely difficult conditions.

ALSO READ: Firing De Ruyter now like booting the pilot while plane is crashing

“If the procurement of renewables really had happened faster back in 2020, when De Ruyter was appointed as CEO, by now we would have had substantial amounts of renewables on the grid which in turn would have allowed them to take some of the really poor power stations off the grid in order to rehabilitate them,” Swilling added.

Mantashe responded

On 29 June, Mantashe responded to Media24 saying it is unfair to blame him or the government for the crisis at Eskom.

“But despite it being under public enterprises, government as a whole has gone the extra mile [by] instituting a supplementary programme to make up for the shortcomings at Eskom. We [as government] are actually implementing the programme aggressively, but the more we implement it, the worse Eskom becomes. What do I do with that?” said Mantashe.