Load shedding: More legal woes for govt as UDM, BOSA, Numsa approach court

Addressing media at a press briefing in Sandton on Monday, the leaders of the UDM, Build One SA and the National Metalworkers Union of South Africa confirmed they have requested a hearing on 28 February in the High Court in Pretoria.

This comes after lawyers representing political and civic organizations issued a letter of demand to Eskom CEO André De Ruyter and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, giving them until 20 January to respond to their demand to end load shedding with immediate effect or face legal action.

The parties have listed President Cyril Ramaphosa, his ministers in the departments of minerals and energy, and public enterprises, their directors general, as well energy regulator Nersa and Eskom as the respondents.

Reading from the joint statement, Holomisa said they have asked the court for an order on three specific reliefs; which are the suspension of the Nersa approved tariff hike, protection of critical infrastructure and the exemption of key institutions including public health facilities, schools, police services, businesses trading in perishable goods.

“Firstly, that the decision by Nersa taken on 12 January 2023 that Eskom is entitled to recover, via an 18.65% price increase, the amount of R318 billion from electricity users who are Eskom’s customers in respect of 2023/2024 financial year is suspended and shall not come into operation. Secondly, to insulate and protect critical infrastructure from the harsh and unpredictable effect of rolling blackouts…"

READ: Energy crisis result of ‘perfect storm’ - Ramaphosa

Meanwhile, Numsa’s Irvin Jim says South Africans should not settle for mediocrity demanding that the president should be more transparent about who forms the national crisis committee tasked with devising a plan to end load shedding.

“We must ask the hard question, given the plan that the president released yesterday, who forms part of this national crisis committee? Who are they? What are their engineering qualifications? Our experience of them is that they are just academics mostly, who have no experience of generating," added Jim.

He accused the committee of failing to focus on fixing Eskom, but rather on privatising the struggling entity.

“The whole energy provision of the country is being handed over to IPPs [Independent Power Producers] and we are being promised that we will be pulled out of this crisis through renewable [energy]. When in fact the system operator, not us but Eskom’s system operator, was very clear that renewable IPPs will not solve this crisis that we are in,” he continued.

Build One SA’s Maimane labelled the rolling power outages as economic sabotage and likened the situation to an act of war, where the first point of attack is a country’s power supply to cripple economic viability.

He said the government must come to court at the end of next month and account to the nation.

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