‘Outright lies’: DA accuses Mbeki of trying to shift blame for load shedding

The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Sunday accused former president Thabo Mbeki of having “amnesia” after he said government wasn’t to blame for load shedding.

Mbeki made these comments while delivering a lecture at Unisa in Thursday night.

He said the load shedding crisis in South Africa was deliberately created and blamed managers of the country’s power stations.

ALSO READ: WATCH: Mbeki claims load shedding was deliberately created by Eskom

The former president said the “false” narrative for the cause of rotational power cuts was that government hadn’t listened when told to invest in new generation capacity and infrastructure.

“That story was cooked up. The reason there was a shutdown is because the people in charge of the power stations didn’t do what they supposed to do which was to replenish coal,” Mbeki said.

‘Outright lies’

DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia said Mbeki’s claim “borders on propaganda and outright lies”.

Cachalia accused Mbeki of trying to absolve himself and the ANC from any responsibility for the country’s electricity crisis.

He said Mbeki admitted in 2007 that the government made a mistake by not investing in electricity generation.  

“Mbeki must inform us what has changed from this position that has warranted his sudden turn to absolve himself of any responsibility,” said Cachalia.

ALSO READ: ‘Intensity of load shedding coming down’ – Ramokgopa

The DA MP also said a white paper from the Department of Minerals and Energy in 1998 warned that “Eskom’s present generation capacity surplus will be fully utilised by about 2007. Timely steps will have to be taken to ensure that demand does not exceed available supply capacity…”.

“This repudiates all the lies that Mbeki is now trying to drip feed the country in the vain hope that it would help the ANC escape culpability over what was essentially a gross dereliction of duty by his administration,” said Cachalia.

Brian Molefe

During his lecture, Mbeki also absolved “his friend” Brian Molefe of any blame for load shedding.

While there was less load shedding during Molefe’s tenure, energy analysts have since argued that this was due to South Africa’s energy demand decreasing at the time and reduced maintenance at power stations.

The Zondo commission also heard testimony that Molefe had ensured that huge Eskom contracts were awarded to Gupta-linked companies.

ALSO READ: Eskom to enforce court order to recover millions paid to Brian Molefe in pension benefits