Cape Town - President Cyril Ramaphosa said in reply to opposition parties and organisations taking him to court over the constitutionality of load shedding, that none of the government responders have the responsibility to supply electricity to South Africa, and they were therefore not in conflict with the Constitution.
The case was brought by 19 opposition parties, trade unions, neighbourhood watches and other organisations – including ActionSA, the UDM, IFP, and the National Union of Metalworkers in South Africa (Numsa).
They are seeking to have the ANC-led government’s response to load shedding declared unconstitutional and breaching fundamental human rights.
The case is set to be heard on March 20 in the Gauteng North High Court in Pretoria, and also asks that certain sectors such as safety and health care be exempted from load shedding.
Respondents include Eskom, Ramaphosa, Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and his director-general, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and his director-general, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), and the government.
Ramaphosa said: “This case is about the provision of electricity to the people of the Republic. None of the government respondents cited herein have a constitutional obligation to supply electricity to the people of the Republic.
“While the Constitution requires the three spheres of government to co-operate with each other, it also requires them to respect each other’s powers and functions and not to assume any power or function except those conferred upon them in terms of the Constitution or some other legislation.”
He said it was now accepted that municipalities were, in law, required to provide water and electricity to their people as a matter of public duty.
“The mere fact that the president’s best efforts may not have produced the results desired by the applicants in this case does not mean that the president has ‘failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic’, as suggested by the applicants,” Ramaphosa said.
This comes a week after former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter’s explosive interview on eNCA in which he made a number of serious allegations – including that a minister and highlevel politician were enabling corruption at the power utility and that Eskom allegedly served as a “feeding trough” for the governing party.
On Sunday, De Ruyter’s 153-page answering affidavit in reply to the same court challenge on load shedding, described the historical and immediate causes of load shedding in South Africa – which had complex causes dating back to at least 1998, and corruption at the power utility and its wide-ranging impacts.
In this De Ruyter relays a number of cases that display that damage to Eskom property and operations has been deliberate, and said the sheer number of inexplicable incidents of damage overwhelmingly confirmed that Eskom experienced a sustained campaign of sabotage.
“Eskom is spending about R3.2 billion per annum on private security due to the sustained sabotage and criminality it and its personnel have experienced … In a number of cases, it is clear that damage to Eskom property and operations has been deliberate,” De Ruyter said.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za