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Johannesburg - The government should allow other power producers to compete and end Eskom's monopoly, the DA said on Wednesday.
"Let's break this monopoly before Eskom breaks us, and allow independent power producers," Democratic Alliance leader in Parliament Mmusi Maimane told party supporters in Johannesburg, echoing what DA leader Helen Zille said in her latest SA Today newsletter.
READ: Zille: Break Eskom monopoly or it breaks SA
The DA held a protest against rolling blackouts outside Eskom's head office in Megawatt Park, Sunninghill.
READ: LIVE: DA protest calls for an end to Eskom's monopoly
President Jacob Zuma should scrap the nuclear power deal.
"Scrap the nuclear deal now... Zuma and his Cabinet are looking for pensions from this deal. It has nothing to do with the needs of South Africans right now."
He called on Parliament to pass the Independent System and Market Operator bill (Ismo). The bill, if passed, would allow independent power producers to enter the electricity market.
READ: ANC's decision to bury electricity bill disturbing - expert
Eskom implemented more stage 1 load shedding on Wednesday.
Watch the interview with Maimane:
Can't rely on Eskom
"No longer can South Africa afford to have Eskom supply 95% of our electricity when mismanagement is the order of the day behind these walls," said Maimane.
"No longer can we allow a situation where Eskom not only produces the bulk of our electricity, but also decides where we buy and how we sell our electricity.
"Our existing power stations under Eskom have fallen into disrepair, breaking down on a weekly basis due to a lack of maintenance.
"Eskom has also been unable to build new power stations on time either, with Medupi and Kusile now more than 5 years behind schedule.
"In the meantime, the costs of these projects to the taxpayer have more than doubled. Medupi’s final estimated pricetag of over R170bn will make it one of the most expensive coal-fired power stations in the world."
"Eskom’s failure to plan ahead is the central reason why we have load-shedding today."
Where it all began
Explaining why the DA embarked on the protest, DA shadow energy minister Lance Greyling told fin24 that it was to protest the fact that the government has not done anything over the last 15 years to break the stranglehold of the Eskom monopoly on the electricity industry.
Listen to the full interview:
“Eskom currently accounts for about 95% of our energy generation,” he said via phone from Cape Town. “It owns and controls and operates the entire transmission grid and is responsible for about 42% of final distribution.
“The vertically integrated structure has to be broken, because in fact this is part of the reason why we are in the electricity crisis that we are in today.
“In the 1998 energy white paper, it says that such a break up of Eskom needs to occur and because they didn't embark on that in the early 2000s, we are now seeing the results of that [because] we haven't built enough generation, we haven't encouraged enough independent power producers to … generate electricity and to put that on to the grid.
Call to start the process
“We are calling on government to start that process now.
“Back in 2000, the government didn't initiate the proper reform process to create a conducive environment for the private sector to build that generating capacity.
“They didn't implement any of the reforms called for in the white paper on energy from 1998.
“The private sector said they couldn't bring projects online under these conditions.
“For five years, we sat and no one brought new generation online. The energy crisis that we are facing today is a direct result of those poor policy decisions back in early 2000.
ANC lekgotla throws bill out
“What we have seen come out now from the ANC lekgotla is to say that they now want the Ismo bill completely canned.
“This decision is very strange to the DA,” he said, as the president in his 2010 and 2014 state of the nation addresses said they would bring the Ismo bill to parliament and would be passing that and thereby taking away the transmission grid from Eskom.
“Now what we are seeing from the ANC is that they don't want this Ismo bill, they want the Eskom monopoly and they want Eskom to remain the central energy generator in the country.
“What they are saying to the private sector is 'help us in this crisis, but just accept the fact that the Eskom monopoly will remain in place'.
Ideological divisions within ANC
“I think there is an ideological division that is concurring within the ANC. We have seen this kind of dance around electricity reform, which has gotten us nowhere. Some people within the ANC believe that the Eskom monopoly must be broken up, and they were in the fore in the last three years.
“We passed the Ismo bill as a committee in parliament and it was going to the house to be debated, but at the last minute it was taken away from the house by ministerial interference and that bill never got passed.
“It's that old state-centric thinking that Eskom as a state-owned enterprise must remain the monopoly.
“It's that thinking that has gotten us into the mess today.”
Bonuses for what?
Maimane told protesters that since load shedding began in 2008, Eskom’s top executives were paid R63m in performance bonuses.
"Bonuses for doing what exactly," he asked. "While executives took home millions in reward for their mismanagement, load shedding cost the South African economy R300bn and 1 000 000 jobs.
"Load shedding is not a mere inconvenience. Load-shedding is job shedding. Electricity is the fuel that drives our economy, and without an adequate supply it will not grow.
"The electricity crisis touches every single aspect of our daily lives. Parents are left unable to cook for their children, students cannot study, hospitals cannot care for their patients and factories cannot produce.
"We can no longer sit back and wait for the lights to go on. We must restore power to the people.
"The time has come to break Eskom’s monopoly over our electricity supply."
- Sapa contributed to this report.
