New political party’s logo features a man in a tractor brandishing a spear on a mine

A new socialist party that launched last year, Rebuild South Africa (RSA), appears to believe that load shedding is nothing but a conspiracist plot to destabilise the country and force the privatisation of Eskom.

Their statement today may also be many South Africans’ first opportunity to see their party logo, which appears to bring together interests in farming, mining and traditional warfare.

“As an organisation, we hold that there is no problem with Eskom. The situation is a deliberate mission created to privatise the entity and the people who stand to suffer the constant increasing blackouts are the people of South Africa,” said party leader Blessings Ramoba.

“We condemn the self-inflicted dysfunctionality of the state entity and we regard this as treason. Furthermore, we condemn the escalation of power cut from stage 2 to stage 4 load shedding within just five hours.”

He said no business and the economy, in general, could operate effectively without power supply.

“This has a major effect on business and the South African economic outlook as it creates uncertainty. These power cuts by Eskom are costing the country as much as R2 billion a day.”

Eskom on Wednesday said it would implement stage 3 rotational load shedding from 8am and it was likely to continue until 11pm, due to the shortage of capacity. Stage 3 calls for 3,000MW to be rotationally loadshed nationally at a given period.

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