‘Have you ever seen such madness?’ – Malema on ‘man-made’ load shedding discrepancies

EFF president Julius Malema has questioned the “man-made” load shedding after the lights stayed on last week during the Rugby World Cup final but turned off this week as the matric pupils sat for their final exams.

Malema was speaking during an interview with Faith Mangope on Metro FM on Tuesday evening, where he touched on a number of matters, including socialism, psychological colonisation, land, state capture, local government, load shedding, and voter apathy.

Asked what he will do if he becomes president, Malema said he will give the people of South Africa land, free education, industrialise the economy, and end load shedding.

“I will end load shedding in less than no time because load shedding is man-made. When there is a World Cup, there is no load shedding, but when children are writing matric exams, there is load shedding,” he said.

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“Have you ever seen such madness in life where we must switch on the lights to see rugby and then switch off the lights when the children are writing exams?”

This comes after stage 2 load shedding was implemented on Sunday after the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup on Saturday, and stages 2 and 3 were implemented until further notice on Monday.

The 2023 class of matrics started their final National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations on Monday.

“It’s man-made,” Malema said, adding that load shedding was created by President Cyril Ramaphosa to empower independent power producers (IPPs).

Ramaphosa address

On Monday evening, during Ramaphosa’s address to the nation, the president said there was a measurable decline in the severity of load shedding.

“The Energy Action Plan that I announced in July last year is showing positive results, giving us greater confidence that we will bring load shedding to an end,” he said.

“Regulatory reforms we have initiated have enabled a massive increase in private investment in electricity generation, with over 12 000MW of confirmed projects in development.”

Malema, however, said the government has become so corrupt that it “switches off lights when the children are writing exams”.

The easing of load shedding for almost 10 days, however, had to do with the return of two units at Kusile Power Station ahead of schedule and the contribution from renewable producers.

ALSO READ: Joburg load shedding to be limited to two-hour slots as City Power takes over from Eskom

Recently, it was reported that the ANC National Executive Committee was likely to cut ties with the EFF and Patriotic Alliance at the local government level.

The Daily Maverick reported that the party set out a document stating that EFF was not an acceptable coalition partner.

Questioned about the breakdown in the relationship, Malema said: “Some things are so shocking. You’ll just wake up in the morning and divorce people you were never married to. We were never married to the ANC.”

“We don’t have any relationship with the ANC. We participate in government in Johannesburg because we were invited by the mayor to do so. We were not invited by the ANC.”

Voter apathy

Mangope further addressed voter apathy, as the number of South Africans who vote has been dwindling since 1994, as well as the youth who don’t want to vote because they don’t trust politicians.

“The youth don’t see politics working for them, so the first thing you do is make sure that politics work for the youth, and once they see politics working for them, they will come in numbers,” Malema said.