Lynda Loxton
LAWYER Penuell Maduna is coming under pressure from all sides as he gets to grips with his new post as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs.
In a frank discussion with the parliamentary mineral and energy affairs committees this week, Maduna admitted that, after four months in the job, he was still on a steep learning curve.
Although he had been asked to brief the senate and national assembly committees about his vision for South Africa’s future energy policies, he said that White Papers were still being drafted and he could not be too specific.
But he highlighted some of the thorny issues that he has to deal with – the thorniest being what to do about the deregulation of the oil industry.
“I am under tremendous pressure from the liquid fuels industry to deregulate … I do not know where to begin, I must confess, because the area is very, very complex,” he said.
Labour had told him it feared deregulation would lead to job losses, especially on the forecourts of filling stations, if self- service were introduced. This fear could not be ignored and Maduna said he was examining how other countries had deregulated without destroying jobs.
At the same time, however, he was under pressure from the likes of Pick ‘n Pay, “which says we should allow them to sell liquid fuels and petroleum products at supermarkets”. Pick ‘n Pay has threatened to take Maduna to the Constitutional Court if he does not allow it to sell petrol.
“I am also under pressure from people who want to import finished products that do not need to be processed here. They say that in terms of the current Constitution, that would be protected by their freedom of economic activity,” Maduna said.
“And then I am also under pressure from people who came in at the very tail-end of the apartheid system as dealers in liquid fuels, downstream dealers, operators of filling stations, not to look at the Ratplan [which governs the siting of filling stations].”
While these operators said the Ratplan provided for enough filling stations, Maduna said he was also being lobbied by provincial governments to review the whole system.
Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape in particular had complained that “the supply of liquid fuels leaves much to be desired.
“I am also under pressure from the wholesalers of petroleum products.”
Maduna said that when he took over from Pik Botha, he found a letter on his desk from the South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) stating that, in terms of the “gentlemen’s agreement” with the previous government, it was now due for a three-cent increase on its wholesale margin.
“If you look purely at that agreement, indeed, the companies have been shabbily treated by the government; I don’t have to be convinced about that,” Maduna said.
“The price should have been raised on January 1 and this was never done. The consequence of that is that as at August, they were already `owed’ R513-million.”
He had prepared a memorandum for Cabinet on the issue and it had been decided “that we must renegotiate this and we must also look into the whole pricing system of liquid fuels.
“I wish to reassure these companies that there is no intention not to fulfil our obligations,” Maduna said.
“We are not exhibiting any hostility towards them as investors either. All that is happening is that we are preparing our own position as the government … to negotiate with them.”
He said he could not afford to pay the R513- million from his own budget and that the government, already stretched for resources, would not be able to afford to pay the backlog either.
A three-cents-a-litre increase would also affect the “poorest of the poor whose basic source of energy is paraffin”, Maduna said.
Policy papers on all these issues were being prepared and should be released soon, Maduna said