Mabuza not the man to fix Eskom crisis, warns DA

In a statement on Thursday, the DA said it would be submitting an application to gain access to what was said by a cabinet committee on turning around Eskom’s fortunes.

MP Natasha Mazzone, who focuses on public enterprises in parliament, referred to Eskom’s announcement today that there would be increased load shedding over the next few days as evidence of the trouble in which South Africa continued to find itself.

“The country continues to be held ransom by a state-owned entity that lurks from one crisis to another,” said Mazzone.

“Eskom has been hamstrung by deep-seated corruption, maladministration, a bloated staff compliment, mismanagement and looting. With the discovery of massive amounts of fraud and corruption in the two big coal power station projects, urgent action is required to turn this ship around.”

She said that a meeting had been held today at which Deputy President David Mabuza had briefed cabinet on a report from the joint special cabinet committee on Eskom that was established to deal with the recent electricity supply disruptions.

“The DA will now submit a PAIA application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act to obtain the cabinet decision and report on Eskom emanating from this committee. We have long held that Mabuza is not the man for the job to steer Eskom out of the dark given his chequered history.

“In fact, entrusting this crisis with a former premier who plunged Mpumalanga into dysfunctionality and left it as a failed state is an indictment on President Ramaphosa, who fails to understand the gravity of this matter.”

She warned that Eskom posed a risk to South Africa’s sovereign credit rating with enormous government guarantees. This was even more dire than first thought, with the chief financial officer of Eskom revealing that they had already used R337 billion of the R350 billion in guarantees and were negotiating for a further R13.6 billion.

“The DA has led the charge on ways to fix Eskom over the last year, with the introduction of the Independent Systems Market Operator (ISMO) Bill or ‘cheaper electricity bill,” said Mazzone.

“The bill seeks to break Eskom into two separate entities – a generation and transmission/distribution entity. Our offer would see the generation entity privatised in an effort to break Eskom’s monopoly on production of energy, allowing independent power producers to compete on an equal footing in the generation sector. This bill has been gazetted in parliament for public comment.”

She said they would continue to fight for cheaper cleaner electricity for all South Africans.

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