Ramaphosa says wants to avoid ‘drama’ of axing Gordhan over electricity crisis

Residents and businesses have been hard hit by the power cuts since the past weekend. 

It’s also a tough time for matric pupils preparing for final exams and tertiary students writing online assessments. 

Load shedding also comes at a time when the country is preparing to go to the polls on November 1 for the local government elections. 

But Eskom has vowed the power cuts wouldn’t affect polling. 

Government, political parties and experts has also applied pressure on the power utility to ramp up its efforts to secure generation capacity in the coming days.  

Meanwhile, there are growing calls for heads to roll, including calls for Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Pravin Gordhan to be axed over the utility’s continuous failures. 

Ramaphosa has again called for calm amid heightened frustrations.

“We are all concerned and also a bit upset. Others are and others are very angry. This is the time for us to work together to solve this problem. It’s not, right now, the time for incrimination. It is for me a time to get people to buckle down and do their work,” he told media during an election campaign in Ekurhuleni. 

“I don’t believe, for me, that this was intentional. The breakage of machines is not intentional - there could be some negligence, there could be some oversight that did not happen but it is not intentional. It so happens that it happens at a critical time of our country.”

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Ramaphosa vowed there would be a solution for the power cuts by the weekend.  

“I am determined that this problem shall be solved and by the weekend we will have solved the problem.”

Journalists pushed for Ramaphosa to respond to calls for senior officials, including Gordhan, to be hauled before government and account for the crisis at Megawatt Park. 

“I know that’s the drama you would like to see,” he said.

“My concern, my main drama is that Eskom must be returned to proper functionality and it must happen now and immediately. That is my main concern, the other issues I will see later,” Ramaphosa added.   

The country is currently on stage 4 load shedding.