Ramokgopa proclaims ‘no need’ for electricity ministry by the end of year

Ramokgopa said he was the one minister who was “working hard to get out of employment”.

“There will not be a need for this ministry by the end of this year,” he told the In Perspective Infrastructure Forum organised by asset manager Ninety One.

He also said that there would be “significant improvement in the next three to five months” — timing which suggests a political timetable linked to the 29 May general elections.

When asked about that timing during a Q&A after his panel discussion, Ramokgopa denied there was a political agenda at play, saying that the situation in the first part of this year had improved compared to the same period in 2023.

“Those are the facts. It startles me, they say resolve the problem, and when we resolve the problem, they say it’s elections,” he said. “Even if the election is tomorrow we will continue to resolve the problem ... I'm not a politician, I’m an activist who has been deployed to resolve this problem.”

Thabo Khojane, managing Director of Ninety One SA, in conversation with SA’s Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, and Mzila Mthenjane, chief executive officer of the Minerals Council South Africa, 12 March 2024. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

It is true that there has been a reduction in the rolling blackouts dubbed as “load shedding” by Eskom.

According to Eskom’s data, there were just over 1,800 hours of rotational power cuts between 1 December 2022 and 16 February 2023 compared to 1,217 hours for the same period in 2023/2024 — about 600 hours or a third less.

“... in the same period, there has been 57 days of load shedding of which 14 days were at stages 4, 5 and 6 of load shedding in December 2023 and January 2024 compared to the 78 days, of which 66 were at stages 4, 5 and 6, in the same period previously. Therefore, the notion that Eskom is experiencing a further decline in performance is not true,” Eskom said in a recent update.

That’s still a long way from wrapping up the Electricity Ministry and declaring “mission accomplished”."

Eskom’s aging fleet of power stations still has many pressing challenges, including complex management, low morale, lack of accountability and slow procurement, according to a recently unveiled report by the German consortium VGBE which the Treasury commissioned.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Treasury warns Eskom to heed VGBE consortium’s report on problems and solutions

It warns that targeted maintenance, done properly, needs to be ramped up “... even if this means a higher level of load shedding for a limited period of time”.

It’s hard to see how this can be done in such a way that the rolling blackouts which are crippling the economy are brought to an end in time for Christmas 2024. And the ANC government that has caused the problem through decades of mismanagement and corruption hardly has a track record to inspire confidence.

The power cuts would be far more intense and frequent were it not for the rollout of rooftop solar and other renewable energy projects undertaken by the private sector.

The situation would also be worse if South Africa’s economy, which only grew 0.6% last year, was expanding at a robust pace. This is a bit of a Catch-22 scenario: growth would be much faster if there was no shortage of power, but faster growth now would mean more power cuts.

Still, a target is welcome and Ramokgopa noted that his performance was the easiest to measure.

“He wants to work himself out of a job and that’s a good thing,” one senior industry executive attending the forum told Daily Maverick. DM