THE Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is calling for the resignation of Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter after two weeks of rolling blackouts due to ongoing generation capacity shortages.
Trade unions, NUMSA and the National Union of Mineworkers, have also joined calls for the resignation of the power utility’s CEO and the board of Eskom.
The unions, which organises at Eskom, are joining the EFF and the Black Business Council in calling for heads to roll at the parastatal.
In a statement on Wednesday, the EFF urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to dissolve Eskom’s board, accusing it of failing to provide strategic guidance to lead the parastatal’s management.
The EFF’s leader Julius Malema has been at loggerheads with Gordhan for several years now and has branded him as an “unethical and incompetent” minister.
Malema’s party claimed that Gordhan was colluding with big business, as part of a racist project, to collapse South Africa’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the sole purpose to collapse them so that they can be sold.
“Under Gordhan political leadership, SOEs’ financial and management crises are deepening without a practical and implementable plan to rescue them,” the EFF said in a statement.
“These shenanigans started with the complete collapse of South African Airways (SAA), and the same is being done to Eskom, Denel and Transnet as buyers are lining up to pick South Africa’s sovereign assets for almost nothing compared to their development mandate and potential balance sheet and good will.”
The EFF said it was vindicated by the prolonged bouts of load shedding because it had “correctly” called De Ruyter’s appointment in 2019 irrational and shameful because it believes he is not qualified to manage Eskom.
The party said De Ruyter’s refusal to voluntarily resign showed the “level of white arrogance even in the face of dismal failure”.
“His arrogance is emboldened by sheepish board executives that defend even the most indefensible as long as it has the mainstream media chorus singing for them. They must all go now!”
The NUM has also demanded that the entire Eskom executive and board step down, and the government declare a national crisis to deal with rolling blackouts which have lately escalated to stage four – involving taking 4 000 megawatts of capacity off the grid – from the less severe stage two.
“The leadership of De Ruyter has sold South Africans a dead cat,” the union said in a statement.
“They promised that they will resolve the problem of load-shedding in 18 months. They dismally failed to meet their set target. All we need is the leadership that will keep the lights burning.”
Numsa said it is clear that the current executive management of Eskom led by De Ruyter and COO Jan Oberholzer others has no idea how to resolve the crisis of load shedding at Eskom.
“We repeat our demand for the Eskom board to remove both De Ruyter and Oberholzer immediately and urgently find suitably qualified executive managers with engineering experience at Eskom, to help us stabilize the grid. Such talent does exist and the governing ANC and the Eskom board must urgently act in the interests of the public and remove the pair for the sake of our economic recovery as a country,” said NUMSA.
“Under the leadership of Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko we were able to significantly reduce load shedding, but since then, the situation has drastically worsened. The skills to stabilize the grid are there within Eskom, the technical ability is there but the people who have been tasked to implement and lead are incapable of turning the situation around.”
Eskom implemented stage 3 load shedding from 5am on Wednesday and it is expected to last until Friday at 5am.
This will be followed by stage 2 load shedding, which is expected to end at 5am on Saturday.
- Inside Politics
