President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo Delwyn Verasamy, M&G)
President Cyril Ramaphosa wants the ANC two-day national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla to draft a realistic plan to fix Eskom, boost the economy and deliver basic services ahead of the 2024 elections.
Ramaphosa also cracked the whip, telling the party’s top 80 leaders that they would have to accept renewal as being “irreversible”, toe the party line and speak with one voice on key issues because the campaign for the 2024 poll had already begun.
The president made the comments in his opening address to the party’s two-day NEC lekgotla, called ahead of a cabinet gathering next week at which changes to the executive — and the filling of vacant portfolios — is expected to take place.
The lekgotla will discuss interventions in the country’s electricity crisis, including the shift in political oversight over Eskom and additions to South Africa’s energy mix, along with changes to the executive ahead of Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address (Sona) on 9 February.
Ramaphosa urged NEC members not to use the lekgotla as a platform for “lamenting” and called on them to instead contribute to solutions to South Africa’s problems and to rebuilding the party.
He said the lekgotla needed to track the implementation of decisions taken by previous gatherings and to identify priority areas for action during 2023.
The challenges facing the party and South Africa were “enormous” and required realistic prioritisation because “we cannot do everything that needs to be done all at once, especially taking our resource challenges into account”.
The party needed to focus on broadening and deepening organisational renewal; speeding up the work to end load-shedding, mobilising social partners regarding investment and job creation; fighting crime and corruption and building a better South Africa and a better world.
“Should we attempt to address everything with the same urgency and at the same time, we are likely to fail to address anything in any meaningful way. We must therefore prioritise and make choices about the pace and scale with which we will address such challenges,” Ramaphosa said.
He said the ANC needed to be “honest” with the public about its decisions, plans and targets so that it could be judged by the work it has done towards achieving them by the time elections are held in 2024.
The elections would be “probably the most difficult election campaign that we have fought” and would have “profound implications” for the direction the country took.
“Although no party has had an official launch, we observe that the campaigns for the 2024 elections are well underway. We need to get into election mode without delay,” he said.
“Through our actions now, we need to send a clear message and signal to voters that the ANC is taking all necessary steps to deal with the challenges they are confronted with, specifically unemployment, rising cost of living, crime and instability, and poor service delivery.”
“Our focus must therefore be on action and urgency,” he said.
Renewal of the ANC was “non-negotiable” and had to become “irreversible” if the ANC were to survive.
“This is an existential issue; if we do not renew our movement, it will perish,” he said.
“We must unite our movement and move beyond the factional considerations and contestations that have plagued our organisation in recent years.”
NEC members needed to lead by example so that the public saw “the legacy of our heroes and heroines in our words and actions”.
Turning to the energy crisis, Ramaphosa said the government had signed agreements with independent power producers for 26 renewable energy projects, which together will generate around 2 800 megawatts.
An additional 300 MW has been imported through the Southern African Power Pool, and
negotiations were underway to secure a potential 1 000 MW from neighbouring countries.
Ramaphosa said Eskom would purchase up to 1 000 MW of power from companies
with existing generation capacity while red tape had been cut and regulatory processes refined to reduce the turnaround time for new projects and grid connection approvals.
A team of independent experts had also been established to work with Eskom to identify problems at the six most problematic power stations and to improve their performance.
Ramaphosa said all of this “will take some time to have an effect”.
“We must be honest with the people that load-shedding — in one form or another — will be with us for some time. Our objective is to lower the stages of load-shedding to the lower levels whilst we address the overall challenge of ensuring security of energy supply,” he said.
The lekgotla would need to focus on how to speed up implementing the energy action plan adopted in 2019 and to identify additional measures to “reduce the severity and frequency of load shedding”.
The party also needed to play a role in popularising campaigns to reduce usage and electricity theft and to promote a culture of payment for power.
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