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President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed historical issues at Eskom for the electricity crisis, saying the current load-shedding woes stretch back fifteen years.
Speaking at a media conference following his UK visit, Ramaphosa said when Eskom management wanted to build new power stations years ago, they were stopped.
“They were told, no, don’t, the power stations will be built by the private sector. You just keep the lights on,” Ramaphosa told journalists.
He added that maintenance was stopped for 12 years and that power stations “were driven hard” on the instruction to keep the lights on.
However, his latest claim is in stark contrast to his promise on 2 September 2015 that load-shedding would be a thing of the past in 18 months to 2 years.
“In eighteen months to two years, you will forget that the challenges we had in relation to power or energy or Eskom ever existed,” he said seven years ago.
Ramaphosa was confident that load-shedding would be a thing of the past because two new power stations – Medupi and Kusile – were set to come online.
These two mega power stations would add 9,600MW of reliable generation capacity to the grid, enough to resolve the energy shortages.
It did not happen. Corruption, mismanagement, design problems, and human error have crushed Medupi and Kusile’s performance.
A large part of the mismanagement, corruption and other problems occurred under Ramaphosa’s watch. In December 2014, he was appointed head of the Eskom war room to fix load-shedding.
He failed to tell reporters that most of Eskom’s problems, including load-shedding, are a result of the government’s policies and interference in the energy sector.
Instead of taking responsibility for Eskom’s poor performance, Ramaphosa, and Eskom, have created a narrative that the past is to blame for current load-shedding issues.
Here is a look at Ramaphosa’s claims about problems in South Africa’s energy sector – and what the facts say.
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