On Wednesday, the government announced that it was ending the National State of Disaster for the electricity crisis, claiming that the period during which it was in effect had helped alleviate the danger. There is no evidence that this is true. Rather, this appears to be another sign that the government is unable to fix a problem using a certain course of action and then sticking to it.
The end of the National State of Disaster was announced on the same day that the National Treasury backtracked on Eskom’s exemption from parts of the Public Finance Management Act. These developments, along with other actions by the government, appear to reveal that President Cyril Ramaphosa has no clear plan to end our burning energy crisis.
The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) published a statement indicating the government had “terminated, with immediate effect”, the National State of Disaster that was signed in February by the then Cogta minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
GCIS said: “A significant enabler of the improvement in the supply of electricity has been the appointment by President Cyril Ramaphosa of Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa as Minister of Electricity”. It also pointed to some of the interventions adopted by the National Energy Crisis Committee in terms of the Energy Action Plan.
Nowhere in the statement is there any evidence that more megawatts have been added to the national grid, or that it is in any better shape than it was in February. The statement was published on a day when the country was under both Stage 3 and Stage 4 load shedding.
Meanwhile, Eskom has published data…