The African National Congress has cautioned against ”alarmist responses” to the electricity outages that have affected especially the Western Cape over the past couple of days.
In a statement from national spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama on Friday, the ruling party said that contrary to claims from some quarters, ”the outages over the last few days are not a consequence of a lack of sufficient capacity. They stem from technical problems at Koeberg power station, which are urgently being addressed.”
Noting that ”as some parties seek to gain political mileage from these technical problems, there is a danger that the cause of these outages is misrepresented and the long-term effects exaggerated”.
Ngonyama said South Africa is well-placed to meet its energy requirements now and into the future, ”with the ANC-led government significantly increasing investment in electricity supply. It is more than capable, building on existing capacity and through its energy investment plans, to make affordable electricity available to all South Africans and to meet the demands of accelerated economic growth.”
The ANC called on Eskom ”to spare no effort in ensuring that power is restored to the affected areas as soon as possible. The ANC further calls on Eskom and the relevant authorities to make every effort to ensure that members of the public are kept properly informed as to the status of power supply and on progress with fixing the problems.
”The ANC further urges those affected by the outages to assist in alleviating this problem by reducing consumption as far as possible, particularly during morning and evening peak periods.”
Zille promises to knock on Erwin’s door
Meanwhile, Democratic Alliance politician says that if she were elected Cape Town’s mayor in next Wednesday’s local government elections, one of her first tasks would be to ”knock on the door” of Minister of Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and ask him about his electricity-outage back-up plans.
Zille — who was a guest of the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday — said the whole truth about the power situation has not been told by politicians and public officials.
The DA candidate said she has been ”particularly irritated” with the invisibility of the key players during the crisis that has hit Cape Town. ”The mayor [Nomaindia Mfeketo], Eskom chief executive Thulani Gcabashe, and the city manager [Wallace Mgoqi] were out campaigning with President Thabo Mbeki” during this week’s crisis.
She accused the city manager of ”an absolute abrogation of his duty as a professional paid by the ratepayers” while the city ”sat in darkness”.
”Where was the lavishly paid Dr Bulumko Msengana, the executive director of infrastructure?” she asked. ”According to what his PA told people who phoned his office trying to get information, he was also out canvassing with Dr Mgoqi and the president.”
She asked why the second generator at Koeberg is taking twice as long to fix as initially expected and announced. ”Why are the transmission lines from Mpumalanga able to carry only so limited a load?”
”I was particularly irritated by the statement attributed to Gcabashe looking ahead to the challenge of electricity provision in the winter.”
Gcabashe apparently said there is only one generator available at Koeberg ”and if a problem occurs, there could be power shortages. And it is likely that for a portion of winter, we will only have one generator at Koeberg.”
Zille said: ”This is the same Thulani Gcabashe who received a performance bonus of R2,3-million in 2004, bringing his total package to R4,9-million that year — I looked this up on the internet last night, but I could not find his salary package for 2005.”
Zille said she would ask Erwin what systems are in place — as he reported in a local newspaper — to ensure that the problems being experienced are managed. ”I will immediately call him and ask him to tell me what those systems are and to put them in place.”
She said she would be investigating the possibility of bringing tow-barge-mounted emergency power plants into the harbour of Cape Town to supply electricity. ”Nigeria has had to do this from time to time because of the chaos of their electricity supply. It is hugely expensive but may be necessary if we require it to save our economy from ruin during the months of getting maintenance up to speed at Koeberg.”
She would also get the smaller peaking plants at Athlone power station up and running again — ”and we have to ask the question about why they were allowed to be mothballed in the first place when it was clear that energy demands were burgeoning beyond out capacity”.
Zille said if her party — which she said is running ”neck and neck” with the ANC in the municipal campaign in Cape Town — came to power, it would put together a comprehensive energy plan for the city. — I-Net Bridge