The Democratic Alliance (DA) has said that, if the party is elected into power, it will expedite the unbundling of Eskom to solve the country’s energy crisis. (Photo by Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has said that, if the party is elected into power, it will expedite the unbundling of Eskom to solve the country’s energy crisis.
In its election manifesto document, launched on the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Saturday, the DA said the unbundling will help Eskom handle power planning, procurement, contracting, grid system and electricity market operation functions.
The unbundling of Eskom was first announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019 during his state of the nation address.
Unbundling Eskom into three divisions — transmission, distribution and generation — is a step towards liberalising the electricity market and attracting private-sector financing to upgrade and expand the transmission network.
Eskom’s transmission company received its licence last year and is expected to begin trading in April.
The DA’s manifesto said the party would prioritise investment in grid infrastructure to allow it to handle generation capacity from different sources. The country’s inadequate transmission grid has hamstrung the current government’s efforts to end load-shedding.
Key to upgrading the energy grid will ensure a diversified and competitive energy sector, including newly-established public and private generators, independent power producers and municipal generators, the manifesto added.
The party said, should it take over from the ANC, it will regularly update the integrated resource plan (IRP) to ensure that planning for the electricity sector stays up to date with current realities.
Last year, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe came under fire for delaying the release of the energy blueprint after calls that the 2019 document had become outdated.
The IRP, which was eventually released last month, is expected to be finalised by the end of May 2024, with written comments on the IRP 2023 due on 23 March.
The DA’s strategy is similar to Ramaphosa’s proposed plans to accelerate the government’s efforts to reduce load-shedding and address the grid’s inadequacies through the national energy crisis committee (Necom), established in July 2022.
Part of Necom’s plan is to expand Eskom’s transmission lines to avoid the risk of extending the country’s electricity crisis.
Eskom plans to build 14 000 km of new transmission lines between 2022 and 2031 to enable more renewable energy to come onto the grid. Over the past decade, the utility has only built 4 300 km of transmission lines.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said on Saturday that the party would focus on ending load-shedding and water-shedding, halving the rate of violent crime, including murder, attempted murder and gender-based violence.
He added that the party would create two million new jobs, crush corruption by abolishing cadre deployment in favour of merit-based appointments and establish a capable state that delivers for all.
“Our meeting here today is no accident. Our meeting here today is a signal of intent. The DA is launching our 2024 election manifesto from the Union Buildings to send a clear message that in this election, we are in it to win it,” Steenhuisen said.
He said the party aims to display to South Africans that it was serious about rescuing the “Union Buildings from the clutches of a corrupt government and restore them to their rightful place as a symbol of pride for all South Africans.”