Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe.
As South Africa remains in the grip of stage 6 load shedding, with big electricity rate increases now also on the cards, Minister Gwede Mantashe says the power crisis can be addressed within just six to 12 months.
“Eskom must introspect: do we have the capacity to face the crisis? If not, we can go out and look for that capacity… it will take us six to 12 months to resolve this issue if we pay attention to that,” the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy said in an interview with eNCA on Friday.
Mantashe’s comments come just as the ANC, at its 55th National Conference, resolved to move certain state entities back to their relevant portfolios. This would see Eskom move from Pravin Gordhan’s Department of Public Companies to Mantashe’s department.
Mantashe has been openly critical of Eskom’s management and last month accused the utility CEO and his team of “actively agitating for the overthrow of the state” in their failure to halt the loss of cargo. Since then, Eskom’s CEO Andre De Ruyter has resigned him.
“At Eskom, we have 48,000MW connected to the grid, but Eskom at its best can give us 26,000MW. There are 22,000MW that are idle but connected, not offline,” Mantashe said.
“And if there was a focus on servicing those megawatts, we wouldn’t have load shedding.”
Mantashe said the implementation of the government’s renewable energy program would complement Eskom’s generation capacity in the medium to long term, noting that he is a “big believer” in a mix of technologies because he knows the shortcomings of renewable energy.
“But immediately, we need our coal power plant to generate optimally and give us power,” he said.
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