ROLLING BLACKOUTS
President Ramaphosa cuts short foreign trips to address SA’s power crisis
After an urgent virtual meeting with ministers and officials, the President is on his way back to South Africa to ‘deal with current Stage 6 load shedding’ crippling the country.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has cut short his international travels to fly home to deal with the Eskom power crisis. His decision follows an urgent virtual meeting that he called with all the relevant Cabinet ministers and senior officials on Sunday, 18 September.
There has been growing political pressure for Ramaphosa to return to South Africa to deal with the power crisis precipitated by several Eskom power units tripping and forcing the parastatal to introduce Stage 6 power cuts. Diesel supplies to power back-up gas turbine plants fell dangerously low early on Sunday.
Ramaphosa met US President Joe Biden on Friday, 16 September, then flew to London ahead of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday, 19 September.
Presidency stays silent on Energy Action Plan while South Africans kept in the dark
He was scheduled to return to New York after the funeral to attend this week’s high-level opening segment of the annual United Nations General Assembly session. But his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya announced on Sunday evening that Ramaphosa had changed his plans.
“The President will no longer be travelling to New York from London. Instead he will head home to deal with current Stage 6 load shedding. The President has just finished an urgent virtual meeting which he convened with all the relevant ministers and officials.
“This was in between attending to the lying in state of Her Majesty and the King’s reception tonight. He wanted a briefing on what led to so many units tripping, taking the country back to a situation that had been managed. He further wanted to understand what could be done immediately to resolve the current state of load shedding,” Magwenya said.
He added that South Africa’s statement at the UN General Assembly would be delivered by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor instead.
South Africa abstains
Ramaphosa’s decision to miss the UN General Assembly is rather ironic, given that South Africa has just abstained from a resolution that would allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address the same session of the General Assembly by video so he could stay at home to direct his country’s defence against Russia’s invasion.
UN rules normally require world leaders to attend the high-level opening component of the annual General Assembly session in person. But because of the pressing demands of fighting off his giant neighbour’s military assault, Zelensky asked if he could deliver his address remotely.
A resolution to allow an exception to the rules so he could do so was adopted in the General Assembly on Friday by a vote of 101 in favour to seven against. Russia, Belarus (Russia’s military ally in the war against Ukraine), and political allies Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua and Syria, voted against. South Africa and 18 other countries abstained.
South Africa’s decision to abstain for the fourth time on a UN General Assembly resolution concerning Russia’s war against Ukraine has raised eyebrows in the diplomatic community. Many have questioned why Pretoria apparently opposed Zelensky’s seemingly self-evident right to address the world community in a moment of crisis for his country.
It turns out that, as so often with South Africa’s voting at the United Nations, Pretoria’s ostensible reasons for abstaining came down not to the substance of the resolution but to its wording.
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Polarisation
Zane Dangor, director general of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, explained in a statement that South Africa fully supported the principle of Zelensky addressing the General Assembly by whatever means possible.
But South Africa had abstained because of language in the resolution, which he said had politicised what should have been a purely procedural matter and also because of the manner in which countries supporting the resolution had engaged in the debate on the resolution on Friday. This had served to “further polarise the international community”.
South Africa apparently objected to the language in the resolution that said Zelensky should be allowed to participate virtually “owing to ongoing foreign invasion, aggression, military hostilities”. Pretoria also objected to an exemption being granted only to Ukraine.
South Africa instead backed an amendment to the resolution proposed by Belarus, which deleted the references to the ongoing foreign invasion and also replaced the word “Ukraine” with “any Member or Observer State facing the situation described above”.
In other words, Belarus, South Africa and others that supported this amendment felt the exemption to allow a head of state to address the General Assembly remotely should apply to any country facing similar circumstances and should not single out Ukraine. This amendment was voted down.
During the debate, the Ukraine’s representative told the General Assembly that the original resolution aimed to support Zelensky’s right to address the assembly in the most extraordinary circumstances — the ongoing Russian aggression against his country. He called on member states to support the resolution in its initial version and to vote against any attempt to undermine it.
Canada’s representative said the draft decision aimed to provide a specific exemption for a very exceptional circumstance, and the situation in Ukraine warranted such an exception.
He said Belarus’s amendment was not proposed in good faith as it sought to “erase Ukraine from the picture” just like Russia, aided by a complicit Belarus, aimed to “erase Ukraine from the map”.
The UK’s representative said the only reason the assembly had this discussion was because Russia had invaded Ukraine and Zelensky could not travel to the US. Belarus did not introduce its amendment “in good faith” and that the president of one delegation, dealing with an invasion by its neighbour, could not travel, the representative said, adding that the exception could be granted without setting a precedent.
‘Sovereign equality’
Dangor said in his statement that “it is unfortunate that the recommended amendments were not agreed to. We do not agree that the proposed amendments to the resolution were hostile and it is unfortunate that it was characterised as being so.
“In our view, they reaffirm the sovereign equality of all member states. The nature of the debate today leads to further polarisation of the international community at a time when we should be working together to end conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere.”
He added that even after the amendments were defeated, South Africa had considered voting for the original unchanged resolution “solely to express our support for inclusive participation including in this case, Ukraine.
“However, because of the manner in which states supporting an unchanged … resolution engaged in the debate this morning, we have had no choice but to abstain as the debate served to further polarise the international community.” DM
Before we start shutting down industry perhaps we should look at options to produce more electricity. I am involved in the IPP industry and not a single move has been made to procure the additional generation capacity that is being curtailed in wind/solar/hydro/diesel etc. The contracts allow for a maximum of x MW to be injected at any given point. However nearly every IPP has a few extra MW that can be released to the network.
All this requires is a swipe of a pen on an addendum. Potentially at a tariff lower than the main contract.
Before anyone shouts “its renewables and not reliable ” how often do we have extra load shedding so water can be pumped up for release on Monday morning.
This has been mentioned as 300 to 700MW of additional power available almost immediately. Action so far – None that I am aware of.
Gina, it is mind-blowing to imagine how much we spent on diesel instead of using the available extra power at IPP. Same with the supposed 1000MW that will now be sourced from Sasol and Sappi. The fastest cheapest solution is more solar/wind mated to storage (about 165c/kWh for 20h a day dispatch-able is ¼ of what diesel peakers cost). It will take many years but we should be building those 10GW 30hour pumped storage projects already technically verified, immediately. All that is happening in 2022 is anybody that can is going for self-provisioning solar plus storage. By 2024 a significant chunk of the paying clients will have left the pool.
How can 7 against plus 18 abstentions, but 101 for, be polarisation. More ANC Newspeak.
Cyril has had the opportunity since 2014 (In actual fact since 1998 when the anc was warned about this situation) to ‘correct’ Eskom when he was the chairman of the ‘war room’. Instead he supported and protected jz and the rest of the anc to rob SA to the brink of collapse. He must rather stay where he is and allow Eskom management to carry on with correcting the power problem, without anc interference. Artificially propping up unemployment numbers is the name of the game here. Productivity and outcomes are besides the point in anc language.
Without wanting to be too flippant about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, “Lying in state” is what Cyril and his ministerial colleagues have been doing ever since they took office.
what can he, or Eskom, do? In the near-term almost nothing. A start from CR would be that he announces that with immediate effect the serial non-paying councils and regions are placed on permanent stage 6. That way they still don’t pay, but now at least only for 16h a day instead of 24h a day. Extrapolating Eskom 50b bad debt customers all on stage 6 would be good for at least two fewer stages nationally on the paying clients. Maybe then residents of town A will ask why they are shed but their neighbors in town B are not….
Good idea
Then the non paying are punished
Maybe they will then not vote for the incompetent councillors
Regarding the insistence of South Africa to be non-aligned, this is a traditional SA position. The most prominent role that SA can play in the international community is in the diplomatic field, by bringing countries together and building bridges, and although SA may not be influencial enough to bring pressure down on for instance Russia to withdraw its’ troops, we are in a unique position that we are frequently invited to extended G7 meetings while we are also part of the BRICS grouping. Additionally, it is a principle of African nations to promote peace and solidarity among nations and SA has been playing such a role. And the world direly need more solidarity for the world to have any chance to prevent global heating of more than 1.5 degrees, which not just SA but most of Africa, if I am not mistaken, need very much if we don’t want our land to become a desert; Africa and especially SA stands to be worst affected by climate change of all places in the world. So it seems to me that DIRCO’s judgement was good and that we must not read more into our abstention than just that. We are not really siding with Russia; we are siding with peaceful resolving of conflicts.
That is the worst hogwash I have ever heard in international relations. Firstly, you are calling the Russian aggression against Ukraine a conflict as if Ukraine played a part in its own invasion by the Russian thug called Putin. South played a role under Mbeki not under Cyril and there is no role that they are playing except as permanent stooges of Russia. What we do on global warming is very miniscule as Africa as a whole contributes less than 3 percent to global warming. In COP 26. India acting on its own interests pushed the timeline from 2o50 to 2070 and your Russian friends did not even bother to attend! You were not listening to communist quacks of the SACP with their vitriol praising Russia and the ANC through Lindiwe Zulu in their policy conference. Nor were you following the change from the position of DIRCO and the UN Ambassador initial position to a stupid position. There can be no neutrality on a matter of principle. Ukraine was never a threat to Russian security and the Zelensky was very unpopular before the invasion and the issue of corruption of Ukraine was of serious concern to the EU. Countries are not allowed to join NATO if they are going to draw the Alliance to an immediate conflict. Do not spread Russian lies.
South Africa is not non – aligned but aligned to Russia as the ANC and SACP have said whilst you had your ear closed to their hogwash. We salute Ukraine for giving Russian thugs a bloodied nose.
Regarding the electricity crisis, why don’t SA (apart from sourcing more green energy supply very urgently) also make urgent plans to plan and build the other six Ingula-like hydro-electric pump power stations that Eskom already identified locations for in the 1990’s? For SA to move away from fossil fuels, we need a storing capacity for when the sun and wind power is not available anyway, and Ingula alone is not nearly enough. The alternative of batteries and/or hydrogen storage sounds to me not like an efficient way of storage because the maintenance thereof is likely to be very expensive, while these pump stations can in theory at least last for many decades and its capacity can even be increased if the dams are enlarged. But then it needs to be started ASAP because to build such a pump station takes a long time. The fact that it has not been built yet does not make Eskom look good at all.
We’re at the mercy of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And it’s taken steroids.