Cape Town - President Cyril Ramaphosa’s imminent Cabinet reshuffle will see the appointment of a Minister of Electricity in the Presidency to assume responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity crisis, which has now been declared a state of national disaster.
This means critical infrastructure such as hospitals and water treatment plants will be exempt from load shedding.
The new minister will also oversee the work of the National Energy Crisis Committee and will focus full-time on and work with the Eskom board and management on ending load shedding and ensuring that the Energy Action Plan is implemented without delay.
Delivering his State of the Nation Address (Sona), Ramaphosa said extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary measures.
“The process of restructuring (the) government will give us an opportunity to determine the positioning of various areas of responsibilities and how best the various ministries and departments can best serve our national objectives.
We are focusing our attention on the energy crisis right now and will address the restructuring of government in due course.
This is necessary because an effective response to this crisis involves several different departments and entities that require coordination from the centre of government.
“We will be including other social partners in an effective structure similar to the one we set up to drive the vaccine rollout. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures. The energy crisis is an existential threat to our economy and social fabric. We must spare no effort, and we must allow no delay in implementing these measures,” he told the gathering in the Cape Town City Hall.
With the upcoming changes, current Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan will remain the shareholder representative of Eskom and tackle the restructuring of power utility, ensure the establishment of the transmission company, oversee the implementation of the just energy transition programme, and oversee the establishment of the SOE Holding Company.
Ramaphosa said the state of disaster would enable the government to provide “practical measures” to support businesses in the food production, storage and retail supply chain, including for the rollout of generators, solar panels and uninterrupted power supply.
He said the move would help accelerate energy projects and limit regulatory requirements while maintaining rigorous environmental protections, procurement principles and technical standards.
Amid fears of looting of funds meant to respond to the crises, the Auditor-General would be brought in to ensure continuous monitoring of expenditure, in order to guard against any abuses of the funds needed to attend to this disaster.
Ramaphosa said the government would support the power utility to secure additional funding to purchase diesel for the rest of the financial year with the hope that this should reduce the severity of load shedding as Eskom will be able to use its diesel-run plants when the system is under strain.
Researcher and policy analyst Nkosikhulule Nyembezi said there was no convincing justification for the delays in announcing the state of disaster and the appointment of a Minister of Electricity given the urgency of the electricity crisis.
“The president's speech moves people around to create the illusion of action.
“He should have announced the name of the Minister of Electricity he intends to appoint. He should have spelt out the collective role of South Africans in ensuring we get out of the disaster instead of portraying citizens as passive spectators.”
The lack of details to demonstrate decisiveness reflected the choice by a leader who was not serious about positioning the ANC as fit to govern, argued Nyembezi.
“It is a classic symptom of intellectual paralysis in a tired administration. Ramaphosa is fiddling with the laces on shoes South Africa has yet to put on for a race that our trade competitors are already running. There are two separate but related reasons why Ramaphosa cannot catch up.
He has no social partners to help, given the failure to conclude the social compact promised in the past speeches. He has no united support from his party, given the appetite to retain and increase coal power plants at the expense of accelerating clean energy,” said Nyembezi.
About the social compact he promised last year, Ramaphosa said: “We were not able to conclude a social compact in the time frame we had envisaged because a number of new circumstances emerged that made it difficult for social partners to forge a consensus. The social partners have expressed their intention to conclude a social compact and have continued to work on a framework to enable joint action in key areas such as energy, transport and logistics, employment creation and skills development, investment and localisation, social protection, crime and corruption.”
Cape Times