{"id":162929,"date":"2017-03-09T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T06:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=162929"},"modified":"2017-03-09T08:00:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T06:00:24","slug":"eskom-blames-apartheid-for-all-its-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/162929\/eskom-blames-apartheid-for-all-its-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom blames apartheid for all its problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eskom has lashed out at critics, saying that the power provider’s continued failings are an ongoing symptom of the apartheid government.<\/p>\n

In an official statement released in The Star (9 March), Eskom spokesperson Khulani Qoma specifically targeted a Business Report\u00a0letter <\/a><\/strong>by energy commentator Roger Toms, noting that, like his fellow critics, he offered nothing of “substance but a disguised eulogy for the evil system of apartheid”.<\/p>\n

“Eskom\u2019s current challenges are the direct consequence of the ineptitude of Toms\u2019 venerated apartheid state. Energy planning had been earmarked for whites only, as blacks had systematically been excluded,” said Qoma.<\/p>\n

“The current board is cleaning up this very toxic mess. It would be interesting to see how many letters Toms pushed in the 1980s complaining about the lack of a just energy policy that left the black majority in darkness and issues of incompetent planning that resulted in over-capacity leading to some of Eskom\u2019s power stations being mothballed.”<\/p>\n

Qoma further\u00a0defended current Eskom chaiperson\u00a0Dr Ben Ngubane, who he noted had not been\u00a0not been found to have acted irregularly or corruptly\u00a0by any competent authority,<\/p>\n

He also noted that the utility would not allow 2016’s State of Capture report to influence its internal policies as it\u00a0was “admittedly inconclusive and therefore any responsible person would not use the contents thereof as though they were conclusive.”<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Read:\u00a0South Africa is going to court to stop itself from going bankrupt<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom spokesperson Khulani Qoma has lashed out at the power company’s critics for “eulogising apartheid” and blamed the apartheid government for the country’s current power issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":79580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-162929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162929"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162963,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162929\/revisions\/162963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}