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President Cyril Ramaphosa seems to have changed his tune on the decision not to interfere with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (Nersa’s) statutory process to approve Eskom’s 18.65% tariff hike for the 2022/3 financial year. He is now urging the power utility to stall the increase indefinitely.
Ramaphosa has been having back-to-back meetings about the country’s energy crisis, which is spiralling out of control with relentless blackouts.
In his closing address at the Free State ANC’s provincial conference in Mangaung on Sunday, 22 January, Ramaphosa said he had approached Eskom about the increase. This comes barely a week after he claimed he could not intervene in the regulator’s “statutory process”.
“I have said to Eskom it will be an injury to our people if we implement this 18% increase now when we are going through load shedding,” he said, adding that he had asked Eskom to suspend it. “So Eskom is going to consider that.”
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Eskom gets tariff hike while Ramaphosa ‘deeply regrets’ Stage 6 rolling blackouts”
The President attributed South Africa’s energy challenges to Eskom’s inadequacies in attending to maintenance and to the delay in building new power stations. He acknowledged that this had negatively affected “the lives of our people”.
South Africa is short of about 6,000MW of electricity, according to Ramaphosa. He said the country had been making progress in unlocking the “logjams” in processes that would bring more power into the grid.
He empathised with the plight of frustrated business owners whose companies had been put in jeopardy, with some having to shut down.
On criticism that his meetings about the crisis had not borne fruit, Ramaphosa said the government was making every attempt to resolve the crisis.
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“We have been working very hard. We put in place an action plan that I announced last year in July, and the process of adding more capacity with various measures, be it renewable energy or even emergency energy, has been under way,” he said.
His remarks came after the Democratic Alliance launched legal action against the government on Tuesday, 17 January, to fight the 18.65% electricity price increase that takes effect in April. An increase of 12.74% scheduled for April 2024 means a 33.77% hike in the next 16 months.
The DA says in court papers that electricity prices have increased by about 650% since 2007. Party leader John Steenhuisen said they would ask the court to declare as unconstitutional Nersa’s decision to allow increases in the next two years, as well as ongoing and repeated rolling blackouts.
Web of bureaucracy
Ramaphosa said it was “unfortunate” that building new power stations took a considerable amount of time. Eskom is focused on Kusile and Medupi power stations.
Daily Maverick has previously reported that emergency legislation would be tabled to get new power projects on to the grid as progress was being slowed by a “web of bureaucracy”, according to the National Energy Crisis Committee of Ministers.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Government plans to focus on six ailing power stations to resolve the electricity crisis”
In addition to these measures, Ramaphosa said South Africa was also looking at bringing in more experts and engineers who had left Eskom to help rescue the country.
The government, meanwhile, was also looking into buying power from neighbouring countries. Ramaphosa said he had been engaging with businesses that could help cut the red tape.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “DA heads to court to block 18.65% Eskom tariff hike amid rolling blackouts”
Last week, Ramaphosa failed to win the support of a multiparty front to tackle the problem after meetings on Monday, 16 January. The EFF immediately issued a statement slamming plans to take co-responsibility for blackouts and co-create a solution.
Addressing the media on Sunday, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said load shedding would be ramped up to Stage 3 and Stage 4 this week.
Ramaphosa said: “To reduce those stages of load shedding … the interventions that I announced in July are taking effect.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Ramaphosa’s ‘Energy Action Plan’ — how is it faring half a year later?”
“We are now even making sure that there is sufficient diesel to power our two diesel power stations where we can get more power, more megawatts to be brought into the system while those power stations that have been taken out for maintenance and repair are brought back, one by one, so that we can then have power.” DM
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