PHUTI MOSOMANE
THE Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s largest opposition, marched to the ANC headquarters Luthuli House in Johannesburg to demand that the governing party take responsibility for the crisis of loadshedding at Eskom.
The party declared Wednesday a National Day of Action against “ANC loadshedding” and “unaffordable electricity price increases”.
Hundreds of DA supporters marched through the streets of Johannesburg, and waved placards saying, ‘’Loadshedding is killing jobs’’, and ”Power to the People”.
”No more ANC corruption where deals were sealed for Hitachi using Chancellor House. We will not accept the 18% electricity tariff increase. This is the beginning of peaceful rolling mass action [against load shedding],” DA Leader John Steenhuisen said.
“Most of you will know about the looting that took place – and still continues to take place – around the construction of South Africa’s two largest coal power stations, Medupi and Kusile. When those power stations [Medupi and Kusile] were being planned, the ANC’s front company, Chancellor House, bought a stake in Hitachi Power Africa, and then quickly made sure Hitachi would get the mega-contract worth billions of rands to supply the boilers to those two stations.”
“It was reported all the way back in 2015 that this deal gave Chancellor House – or let’s just call them what they are: the ANC – a staggering 5000% return on their investment. That’s a massive profit on the back of crooked contracts. And that wasn’t a government profit, or an Eskom profit. That was purely an ANC profit.”
Steenhuisen said President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet ministers do not care because they don’t pay for electricity.
“ANC ministers don’t get load-shed at all at their official residences. And why not, you may wonder? Apparently because they are so important that they need to have power 24/7,” he said.
Ramaphosa and his ANC cronies have failed the people of South Africa, he added.
“We have to restore power to the people before the situation explodes into chaos,” he said.
Addressing DA supporters, Steenhuisen said the country does not have an Eskom or NERSA problem.
“We have an ANC problem, which is the root course of our problems,” said Steenhuisen.
“If we want to end load-shedding, we have to start ANC-shedding. And that will only happen if you remember on voting day exactly what they did to you. Don’t be fooled if they run the diesel turbines for weeks around elections to temporarily halt load-shedding. Don’t be fooled if Stage 6 suddenly becomes Stage 2.”
DA’s Gauteng leader Solly Msimango and City of Ekurhuleni Executive Mayor Tania Campbell also joined the march, which started at the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, Johannesburg CBD.
Meanwhile, ANC Spokesperson Pule Mabe told reporters gathered outside Luthuli House that the governing party will not be receiving any memorandum from the DA.
”ANC Youth League members are here to protect their offices,” he said.
ANC Youth League convenor, Nomcebo Mhlauli, said: ”Today we gathered outside Luthuli House to expose DA opportunism who are not interested in solutions but in childish & mischievous cheap political point scoring. The ANCYL remains committed to finding solutions to the energy crisis which will be our focus at the Energy Symposium.”
Similar marches took place in Cape Town in the Western Cape.
DA supporters marched to nearby the ANC provincial office in Cape Town and even there, a handful of ANC supporters gather outside the provincial offices led by ANC MP Faiez Jacobs.
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