Climate Justice Coalition to march to Union Buildings on Monday

The march comes amid increasing pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce measures to address the country's energy shortage. 

Lenferna says they will deliver a memorandum of grievances to the Presidency. 

"Our demands are three major ones really. One is that the president announce an emergency renewable energy plans and load shedding. And that's because the evidence is quite clear if we unlock it in our solar wind in storage, we could enlarge sharing in two years.

"But the problem is that unfortunately, the Department of Minerals and Energy and minister Mantashe are refusing to move by refusing to do their job of bringing energy online and the load shedding. But that's why our other demands are for the president to replace Mr. Mantashe with a more capable minister able to actually deliver on his job, as well as to work to fix the Department of Minerals and Energy."

Lenferna says despite their call for renewables, there is still a need for Eskom to get its act together.

"In the end, Eskom has a really difficult challenge where they need new energy supply in order to have the space to do maintenance on their coal plants. And so I think this is where the Minister of Energy fails. If you look at the minister's emergency energy plan that he's created three years ago, its had three extensions to what are supposed to be non-negotiable deadlines, and they've only brought on 150 megawatts, which is a tiny pathetic amount that they signed on to. 

"The minister has failed to deliver on the last emergency energy plan, so we can't put him in charge of the next one. Because that would be crazy to put someone who failed and the last man in charge. So that's a big part of why we're calling for his removal is because, you know, if you can't do your job, if you can't deliver, then somebody more capital needs to step up and do." 

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