By OBAKENG MAJE
The Democratic Alliance (DA) said, it will challenge president, Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision after declaring the ‘state of disaster’ over the energy crisis.
Ramaphosa said this during the State of the National Address (SONA) on Thursday evening at City Hall in Cape Town. However, the DA leader, John Steenhuisen said the decision is ‘dangerous and desperate’.
“We have already briefed our lawyers to challenge the announcement in court. South Africa has been down this road before and during the COVID-19 disaster, we saw the fatal flaws in the National State of Disaster legislation.
“That allowed the ANC unfettered power to loot without any parliamentary oversight. The DA is already in court to declare the Disaster Management Act unconstitutional and we will now do the same to prevent the ANC looting frenzy that will follow Ramaphosa’s dangerous and desperate announcement like night follows day,” he said.
Steenhuisen further said, the country simply cannot survive another round of the looting and irrationality they saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He added that, last time around, the lack of accountability under the National State of Disaster enabled Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – who is again in charge of managing the ANC-made load-shedding disaster – to issue nonsensical and economically destructive regulations that were entirely disconnected from COVID-19, including banning everything from cooked chicken to open-toed shoes and alcohol.
“The National State of Disaster under the guise of dealing with the load shedding crisis will similarly empower the ANC to abuse procurement processes and issue nonsensical regulations that have nothing to do with the electricity crisis.
“The DA will not sit back and allow the ANC to abuse the electricity disaster it created to loot and further abuse the people of South Africa. Instead of punishing the people with a sweeping disaster declaration for the damage wrought by decades of ANC corruption and cadre deployment at Eskom, the DA has consistently called for urgent and focused interventions in the energy sector,” said Steehuisen.
He said, they reiterate their call to urgently loosen the regulatory noose around the electricity system’s neck by incentivising massive private sector investment in generation and removing impediments like localisation requirements and BEE to enable Eskom to recruit the skilled people it so desperately needs to speed up maintenance and unbundling.
Steenhuisen said the rest of Ramaphosa’s address was characterised by the same delusion that led to the disaster declaration.
“He talked of electric cars in a country that does not have electricity. He talked of hope in a country that has lost all hope. He also created yet another minister to add to the other two already getting in the way of a solution to the energy crisis.
“Instead of decentralising control and trusting in the market mechanism, Ramaphosa has opted to centralise even more power in his own Super Presidency – which lacks democratic oversight mechanisms, with Parliament lying in ruins and the Presidency having no portfolio committee to oversee it,” he said.
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