Durban - Afrikaner lobby and interest group AfriForum has released a report which makes for bleak reading for the ANC-led government, highlighting a litany of its failures in running the country, with a worrying focus on the collapse of state-owned entities such as Eskom.
The 27-page report was released on Thursday and brings to the fore some of the governing party’s most glaring failures, including collapsing state-owned enterprises, evidenced by the almost total collapse of power utility Eskom, which has plunged the country into hours without electricity every day.
The report also touched on issues involving education, health, police and defence, transport, and water and sanitation.
The report, authored by Reiner Duvenage, AfriForum’s campaign officer for strategy and content, was particularly damning about failures at the country’s public entities.
Duvenage said that, under the leadership of Minister Pravin Gordhan, since 2018 many of these enterprises had continued to haemorrhage money and provide substandard service to South African citizens.
AfriForum said this was corroborated by the South Africa’s auditor-general in the country’s 2020/21 audit, which showed that the outcomes for SOEs had regressed and the Department of Public Enterprises had accrued a budget deficit of R21.5 billion.
Regarding Eskom, it said a recent conservative estimate had found that stage-6 load shedding had cost the economy R4 billion a day, while it also found South Africa’s GDP would have been R360 billion to R450 billion larger without load shedding.
Additionally, the report said 1 million employment opportunities had been lost because of government-enforced blackouts.
“South Africa’s state-run electricity utility Eskom remains the greatest source of concern in public enterprises, despite promises by President Ramaphosa that achieving energy security is one of the country’s ‘foremost priorities’,” Duvenage said.
The report said Eskom had been one of the world’s best energy providers until the early 2000s, having won international awards and provided energy to many southern African countries.
“Yet under ANC management it has deteriorated over the last few decades due to mismanagement, corruption and its racially discriminatory employment policies of black economic empowerment.
“It now finds itself R396 billion in debt and will soon have to borrow a further R45 billion, according to reports.
“Given Eskom’s near collapse, load shedding has become the norm in South Africa since 2008, due to the government’s failure to deal with Eskom’s failures. Eskom’s electricity provision crisis further worsened from 2019 to 2022, and is rapidly becoming a national crisis,” said Duvenage’s report.
Turning its focus to South Africa’s flag-carrying airline SAA, the report said the airline had been mismanaged to the point of bankruptcy in 2019, and hence the subsequent decision to privatise SAA, which had been an initiative welcomed by many.
“However, it was soon reported that the government had sold a 51% share in SAA for about R51 to the Takatso Consortium, according to an agreement in which a further R3 billion investment is pledged over the next two years. A rival consortium is now suing the government, claiming irregularities in the transaction,” Duvenage said.
The report also highlighted how South Africa’s rail, port and pipeline company, Transnet, had been the subject of many scandals that related to state capture during the Jacob Zuma era, according to findings by the Zondo Commission.
“Despite coming under severe scrutiny for mismanagement and corruption, in 2020 to 2021 Transnet incurred irregular expenditure of R73.1 billion that was not speedily dealt with, as well as R31.1 billion in irregular expenditure and another R140 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure,” the report said.
It further observed that state-owned military and aerospace conglomerate Denel, which was recently given a bailout of R3 billion at the taxpayer’s expense, had been unable to steady its ship after having been tormented by corruption and mismanagement since the early 2000s.
The story will be updated with a response from the ANC once questions sent to the party’s spokesperson, Pule Mabe, have been answered.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE