Johannesburg – ActionSA president Herman Mashaba has hit out at Minister of Energy and Minerals Gwede Mantashe after receiving the African Petroleum Minister of the Year Award while South Africa faces Stage 6 rolling blackouts for the fourth time this year.
He said the inevitable and disastrous implementation of Stage 6 rolling blackouts by Eskom was a matter of grave concern for his party.
"It is hardly believable that South Africa finds itself in a situation where almost half of the country’s electricity grid is off-line, not for the first time this year.
“With the further news that Koeberg’s Unit 1 will go off-line for several months on Thursday afternoon and the loss of 3 000MW’ from units at Kusile and Medupi off-line indefinitely, there is no hope that South Africa will soon be rid of the darkness that the ANC has plunged it into. In fact, we stand on the verge of Stage 7," he said.
Mashaba also highlighted the long-term effect of Stage 6 load shedding, which was estimated to cost the economy R3 billion per day.
"In a scenario where the cost of living and inflation is rapidly increasing, the additional cost of and damage caused by blackouts will only further entrench the hardships faced by millions of South Africans," he said.
DA spokesperson on co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta), Cilliers Brink, has said due to Eskom’s severely constrained power supply not being projected to improve any time soon and a national blackout being an ever-present threat, the DA is calling on Cogta Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, to issue an advisory notice placing the National Disaster Management Centre and its provincial equivalents on a cautionary alert.
Speaking after receiving the award,, Mantashe said that while talking to two of his colleagues, he mentioned the period of state capture and that load shedding was becoming worse than state capture.
"The economy can't move; the economy can't grow," he said.
The Star