Joburg - The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has condemned the ANC government for its failure to act decisively on Eskom load shedding, which is currently teetering between stage six and stage five.
This is as Eskom has announced that its CEO, Andre de Ruyter, has resigned from his position following Eskom’s dismal performance in the past five years.
In the past five years, the power utility has struggled to keep the country’s lights on following a string of rolling blackouts that have adversely affected the country’s economic outlook, resulting in job losses and a stagnant economy.
Before De Ruyter’s resignation, Numsa accused Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan of collapsing SEOs and not being genuine in his attempts to stop load shedding, which has crippled the country’s economy on a large scale.
“For the last couple of days, we have experienced stage 6 non-stop rolling blackouts, and we are now at stage 5 load shedding. We also reject with contempt the lame apology made by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan for load shedding because we know that he is not being genuine.
“Eskom is collapsing, just like all the other SOEs that have been destroyed under his leadership as the minister, because he is an SOE wrecking ball,” Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said in a statement.
Jim said the ANC had failed to prioritise hospitals, which were forced to endure rolling blackouts and expensive diesel in order to keep their lights on.
“The ANC keeps showing us whose interests it prioritises. If these were patients dying in private hospitals, there would be no debate about removing De Ruyter; he would be long gone.
“But because it is poor black people who are dying, the ANC is willing to gamble with the lives of the working class because it has never loved the black and African working class. It is obsessed with pandering to the demands of the privileged wealthy elite, and its job for the last 28 years has been to be a security guard for private capital in particular,” Jim said.
Jim said this had demonstrated the half-baked solutions that President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined earlier this year to deal with load shedding, adding that Patrice Motsepe was a major beneficiary in the renewable energy space, with 12 out of 25 contracts granted in his favour.
“We are not surprised that Ramaphosa would prioritise the involvement of the private sector as a solution for energy generation in this country. Energy, and renewable energy in particular, has become a new site of capitalist accumulation. As long as we have persistent load shedding, then it becomes difficult to justify the existence of Eskom, and the role of the private sector can also be justified,” he said.
The Star