Cape Town – Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has written to President Cyril Ramaphosa requesting a meeting over the dire state of power in the country, saying “for as long as the ANC is in power, you will have less and less power”.
South Africans took to social media to express their anger after Eskom announced that it will implement stage 6 load shedding continuously from 16:00 on Wednesday until further notice.
“I have written to President Ramaphosa to request an urgent meeting about Eskom and the growing power crisis, which now has South Africa on stage 6 until further notice,” Steenhuisen said in a statement.
“I want to hear from him first hand why his government refuses to implement the very obvious solutions to this crisis. These solutions have not changed. Both the DA and many energy experts have been proposing them for years,” he said.
Today I have written to President Ramaphosa to request an urgent meeting with him on South Africa’s deepening electricity and #loadshedding crisis.
It’s time to put politics aside to help keep the lights on, the rolling blackouts are devastating for millions of South Africans.?? pic.twitter.com/jyP6ERAawD
— John Steenhuisen MP (@jsteenhuisen) January 12, 2023
Steenhuisen said that despite the solutions that the DA and “many energy experts” have been proposing, Ramaphosa has not announced progress on any of them.
“Ramaphosa’s first act in his second term as ANC president was to deal yet another blow to Eskom by announcing that the utility will be moved from the Ministry of Public Enterprises to the Ministry of Energy, under coal dinosaur Gwede Mantashe,” Steenhuisen added.
“Nothing could better underscore the fact that while the ANC is in power, the electricity crisis is only going to get worse and worse.
“My advice to all households and businesses in South Africa, whether poor or rich, small or large, is to do everything you can to shield yourself from load-shedding.
“For as long as the ANC is in power, you will have less and less power. Eskom is in a death spiral and the government has no will or intention to do anything about it, because the ANC’s vast patronage network benefits hugely from the status quo.
“The number of days of load shedding per year has grown exponentially, from 141 hours (6 days) in 2018 to 534 hours (22 days) in 2019 to 844 hours (35 days) in 2020 to 1153 hours (48 days) in 2021, to 3776 (157 days) in 2022. In 2023, it will get even worse,” Steenhuisen added.
“The electricity crisis is now the single biggest threat to SA’s wellbeing. It is doing profound economic and social harm.
“Last year, it cost South Africa R560 billion rand in lost productivity. This translated directly to more poverty, more unemployment, more inequality and more crime.
“We’ve had a full year of load shedding altogether since 2015. That’s a full year of economic activity lost to our economy.”
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Compiled by Junaid Benjamin
