Eskom keeps me up at night, admits Ramaphosa
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa says the country’s rolling blackouts keep him up at night.
This comes amid power cuts that continue to leave a trail of destruction for residents and businesses, leaving South Africans in the dark for hours on end and slowing economic recovery.
Power utility Eskom ramped up load shedding from stage 2 to stage 4 on Monday morning.
The power cuts are expected to continue through the week.
Ramaphosa told media at a post-election briefing that the country’s unstable electricity supply remains a major concern for his administration.
“The electricity challenge that we are facing is very concerning to all of us and it’s quite complex. We’re keeping that situation of electricity on our radar screen every hour, every minute and looking at precisely what is happening and how the executives are handling it, how the board is handling, how the Department of Public Enterprises and how the minister are handling it.
“It is the biggest, as we have said in the past and we are in the process of looking closely at how best all this should be done.”
Ramaphosa admitted Eskom’s monopoly over electricity generation must be addressed.
“The independent power producers are pumping in whatever they can but the majority of them are still in construction.
“The direction that we must now move towards is to restructure Eskom, to restructure it in a way that will enable us to have a generation but that generation must be able to purchase generated electricity from others and the state continues to own the transmission because that is the pipeline that must belong to the people of South Africa.
“We are in a very difficult and precarious situation as a nation when it comes to load shedding,” Ramaphosa added.
He believes the rolling power cuts worked against the ANC in the local government elections where the party lost significant support across most of its bases.
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