Mbeki laments poor leadership, bad decisions amid SA's energy crisis
Former President Thabo Mbeki says the country has an enormous leadership challenge and pointed to Eskom as one of the institutions affected by this.
Mbeki was speaking at an engagement with Unisa students in Pretoria on Wednesday where he bemoaned the leadership vacuum in South Africa and the role of the African intelligentsia in deciding the future of the continent.
As South Africans contend with rolling power cuts, which have recently been lowered to stage 5, following the weekend announcement of stage 6 load shedding, Mbeki quoted former statistician-general Pali Lehohla on the crisis at the national power utility.
“Just before I came, former statistician general Pali Lehohla made an interesting observation regarding the energy matter that was raised...that Eskom is a big engineering institution but also, it's a big business. And he said, therefore, in terms of its leadership, you need engineers and economists, but instead, we have politicians and accountants. I am not saying he was right, but he was looking at the issue of the quality of leadership in the country."
"The major challenge we are facing in this country is the challenge of leadership." - Former President Thabo Mbeki@MbekiSchool@unisaradio#ConversationsPresThaboMbeki pic.twitter.com/H4BzlGQtls
— Unisa (@unisa) September 21, 2022
Mbeki further said understanding the problems at Eskom would require a look at its history and the decisions, especially around the construction of the Medupi and Kusile power stations that were made in 2007 when South Africans were first plunged into darkness.
The two power stations have been fraught with challenges which include maladministration, negligence, and a flawed design process - resulting in continuous delays adding close to a decade to completion and a ballooning budget.
Mbeki says instead of implementing a turnkey project, Eskom's leadership at the time broke up the contract to construct the power stations into 20 to 30 contracts, which has had calamitous results.
"As the tender is won by Thabo Mbeki Inc to do the welding, they don't tell my company that these two power stations generate electricity at higher temperatures, so I do my welding according to my knowledge of welding for coal power stations, so one unit is ready and you kick it on...and the welding melts so you've got to stop this thing and start again. So, the cost goes up, and the time to complete goes up," he explained.
Meanwhile, following an urgent meeting to discuss the energy crisis on Wednesday, Cabinet expressed regret that intermittent load shedding happens at the time when government is 'vigorously' engaged with the interventions announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July 2022 to overcome the surmountable energy crisis.
In a statement, spokesperson Pumla Williams says following a presentation from Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, Cabinet was still deliberating on these reports, and that an announcement will be made after further interventions.
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