New electricity minister ‘another crook in the rotten pot’ – DA

The Democratic Alliance has criticised President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of a new minister of electricity in the Presidency, saying this was another way for the ANC-led government to loot the public purse.

Delivering his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday, Ramaphosa said the new minister, who is yet to be named, will attend to the power crisis “day and night”.

DA leader John Steenhuisen described the announcement as “nonsensical” and “putting another cook around this rotten pot that has become Eskom”.

“One of the obstacles to us not being energy secure is that you have too many politicians meddling, instead of getting energy experts and industry experts to solve the problem.

“Now you’ve just added another minister who’s not accountable to Parliament because he’s now located in the presidency. You’ve just layered bureaucracy over bureaucracy instead of getting politicians out of the way.”

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‘New minister will be like a project manager’

It was expected that Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe would take over Eskom, following a conference decision taken by the governing party last year.

Reacting to the new ministry, Mantashe said this was a “correct approach” by Ramaphosa.

“We have declared the state of disaster on electricity, the new minister will be like the project minister to the process. This is a correct approach, otherwise, load shedding will sink all of us.”

State of disaster ‘will open floodgates again’

Furthermore, the national state of disaster on electricity announced weeks ago has now been gazetted and effective immediately, Ramaphosa told the National Assembly.

Steehuisen said this was not necessary as it will open “floodgates” as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“What you’ve done now by declaring a national state of disaster is opening the floodgates again to the same looting and maladministration that we saw during Covid-19.

“What we wanted was for Eskom to be specifically exempted from localisation requirements, from some of the obstacles to employing international experts, and of course, being able to get out of the terrible procurement trap of the coal contracts.”

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