Ramaphosa’s plan to end load shedding: SA reacts

South Africans have expressed mixed reactions to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s elaborate plan to stop load shedding.

Ramaphosa was addressing the nation on Monday night on the energy crisis, which has seen the country plunged into frequent load shedding due to an unstable electricity grid.

During the address, many South Africans reacted to the new power plan on social media, some expressing renewed hope while others remained unconvinced that Ramaphosa could put his words into action or be able to implement anything without the stain of corruption hanging over the ANC-led government.

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Energy expert Chris Yelland who has, in the past 15 years, been extremely vocal about Eskom’s battle to keep the lights on, supports Ramaphosa’s new interventions.

“Well, I am deeply impressed with the comprehensive message and plan of action by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Bringing an end to load shedding with these plans is most definitely possible in a national priority project.”

EishkomSucks tweeted: “A step in the right direction, so I’m happy about that. Without reliable, affordable energy SA was doomed to fail. I hope this is not lip service because South Africans are tired of speeches and no action. Good luck Sir.”

However, some others were not impressed with the “promises” Ramaphosa made to stop load shedding.

Thabo Shabangu tweeted: “Mongameli, can we then have a dashboard to track progress on all the promises you made today, so we don’t have to revisit this in 7 years. There was a 49M project which disappeared. Please allocate specific tasks to different people & let us help u monitor on the website.”

Other sceptics expressed disappointment that the president did not fire Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan for his handling of the energy crisis.

Constitution First tweeted: “It is clear that Ramaphosa will never fire Pravin Gordhan. Instead of assessing Pravin’s performance on the Eskom crisis, Ramaphosa is being told by Pravin to repeat the fake propaganda of Eskom sabotage. The whole president is now chasing wild geese. Pravin is relaxed at home.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) says Ramaphosa’s energy plan is ‘straight out of the DA playbook.’

DA Parliament members Kevin Mileham and Ghaleb Cachalia said in a joint statement, “While the DA welcomes the steps taken by the president to address the energy crisis, we still find it unacceptable that it took this long to take action.

“Now that an energy plan to address the electricity crisis has been announced, the DA will soon be launching an Energy Plan Implementation Tracker to keep Ramaphosa’s government honest on project implementation and red-tape reduction milestones.

“The tracker will particularly hold the President accountable on the commitments made to add new generation capacity.” 

Good party Secretary-General and MP Brett Herron also shed light on Ramaphosa’s action plan.

“It is common sense that adding extra electricity production capacity, diversifying the source of our electricity and stabilising the supply from the current Eskom supply fleet have been the urgent interventions we have needed.”

“The President has announced interventions that will address these persistent but obvious failures that South Africans have endured for far longer than we ever needed to. South Africans have endured electricity blackouts, euphemistically called load shedding, for 15 years. We have suffered enough,” Herron said.

While Ramaphosa empathised with citizens’ frustrations about the power crisis, he said declaring a national emergency was not the solution.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa’s full speech on SA’s energy crisis measures