Budget mute on electricity minister and state of disaster, as De Ruyter bails on Eskom

South Africans remain in the dark on how much it will take to give effect to the national state of disaster declared for electricity or the new minister of electricity to end the crippling electricity crisis.

According to the Government Gazette for the national state of disaster, it was declared to prevent a possible total electricity blackout and consider the enhancement of existing interventions to deal with the crisis.

In his 2023 budget speech delivered on Wednesday, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana only said the R254 billion relief for Eskom required that the power utility prioritise capital expenditure in transmission and distribution.

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He said the debt relief was also for Eskom to focus on maintenance of the existing generation fleet to improve availability of electricity but nothing on how this was expected to be done in relation to the new portfolio.

Godongwana’s ‘Eskom budget’ comes amidst overnight developments relating to the parastatal’s outgoing CEO, Andre De Ruyter, who was asked to leave his post with immediate effect.

De Ruyter was meant to serve his notice period until the end of March, but its understood the former CEO’s recent sit-down interview with eNCA ruffled political feathers.

During the interview, De Ruyter, in response to a question posed, said there was evidence that Eskom was a ‘feed trough’ for the ANC.

There has also been widespread skepticism on Ramaphosa’s interventions, with experts lamenting that the electricity portfolio was unlikely to bear any tangible results and only designed to instill a sense of hope to the nation.

Temporary intervention

This comes as the ruling party’s secretary-general Fikile Mbalula revealed that the new electricity portfolio in the Presidency was a temporary intervention that will cease to exist once load shedding was over.

On Tuesday he said the ANC’s highest decision making body, the National Executive Committee, was fully behind Ramaphosa’s decision to create the new portfolio.

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“The matter of the electricity minister is a matter of intervention in relation to what is facing the country. [Ramaphosa] briefed the [NEC] meeting that the minister will report directly to the president and cabinet… this minister is just like any other minister that the president can appoint. It is not a principle issue that it remains there forever… the day [they] finish load shedding, the job is finished,” he said.

Ramaphosa flying blind

But political science lecturer at the University of Mpumalanga, Khanya Vilakazi, said Ramaphosa was out of ideas and did not know whether he was coming or going.

“He is unable to clinically assess issues and come up with proper and fitting solutions to this issue. What he does is centralise issues within the presidency, hoping and praying that… it will somehow function better instead of coming up with credible solutions,” he said.

Vilakazi said Ramaphosa has failed to rise to the occasion, saying South Africa was hardly the biggest producer of electricity to require a whole portfolio to tackle the power crisis.

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He said this spoke to the fact that Ramaphosa did not believe that those in charge of energy or state enterprises were capable of saving Eskom or making sure that electricity was delivered consistently to the national grid.

“Before even having a minister of electricity, when he delivered his first [State of the Nation Address] in 2018, nobody had load shedding. It had been a while since we had load shedding even at the height of winter of 2017, we did not have load shedding. But we ended the year 2018 with 12 days of load shedding and it has escalated since then,” he said.

Pushing hope, not solution

Doctor of political science at the University of Stellenbosch, Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, said by appointing a minister of electricity, Ramaphosa was being open about the Eskom crisis sitting firmly at the door of government failures.

“This is a prospective sell, if you like, of hope, resilience and recovery. He recognises the politics of the governing party [holding] back governing. He is trying to limit the effects of negative politics in the country, emanating from within his own party, [hindering] the ability of government to do its job,” she said.

However, Schulz-Herzenberg said by declaring a national state of disaster to tackle the power crisis indicated that the president was not messing about.

“I have been quite nervous about this but he is a convincing politician. The way he sold it was: ‘I need central co-ordination; it needs extraordinary circumstances to circumnavigate hectic regulations but I also need to circumnavigate members of my own cabinet who were standing in my way.’”

She said through a state of disaster, Ramaphosa could take control of a number of issues but said whether or not this plays out well for democracy was up for debate.

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