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Last week the DA wrote to the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, requesting that they motivate for a Cabinet resolution that addresses impending disaster looming in the country’s electricity sector, almost exclusively under the failing aegis of Eskom.

Now that 17GW of unplanned outages and a further 5GW offline for planned maintenance has been announced – amounting to a third of Eskom generation capacity – the country is in a state of disaster, driven by Eskom’s ongoing failures.

The DA warned that Eskom has “proved beyond any doubt that it is not able to solve South Africa’s 14 year old loadshedding crisis. The entity’s old generation fleet is on life support and is constantly tripping, resulting in power outages being announced at short and debilitating notice.”

It is now high time that our demands are addressed. The dire situation in KwaZulu-Natal is being compounded by electricity supply issues which affect the ability, inter alia, to pump much needed water supplies. People are dying, businesses will die, ports are closed and the country will grind to a halt.

Do we need to wait before this failure engulfs the entire country?

The DA demands that Cabinet addresses this forthwith and that the situation at Eskom is dealt with urgently by way of the declaration of a State of Disaster at Eskom as a prelude to a commission of inquiry into our generation of electricity.

Issued by DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises, Ghaleb Cachalia MP