South Africa’s energy woes are a “challenge”, but not a crisis and the government knows how to address it, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I think we have a challenge, not a crisis,” Zuma told a breakfast meeting in Cape Town the morning after he announced a R23 billion cash injection for Eskom.<\/p>\n
The president again blamed the scheduled blackouts, in part, on the apartheid regime’s failure to expand the electricity supplier’s capacity.<\/p>\n
“If you look at energy, energy has a history in this country, it has never been enough. It was believed to be because the powers that be at the time said ‘we have enough’.”<\/p>\n
“So the demand has just rocketed after 1994, and therefore undermined the capacity we have.”<\/p>\n
Zuma added that he was concerned about shortcomings in the running of the power grid and the government wanted to establish whether this was due to negligence.<\/p>\n
“You can’t have one power station collapsing after the other because they are not serviced. Where were the people who are working there? What were they doing?”<\/p>\n
But he said the government believed it could resolve the capacity constraints that had seen Eskom increase load shedding in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
“We have a plan for dealing with the matter. It is a good plan, great plan, and we are financing it. So it is not like we don’t know what to do.”<\/p>\n
Asked to forecast how the South African economy would be faring in a decade, Zuma said he believed it would be robust because the government was investing “trillions” in infrastructure development and the country had remained attractive to foreign investors.<\/p>\n
“The South African economy is moving forward and we are being recognised, by the way, by international institutions that we are doing very well.<\/p>\n
“We were at Davos recently, that is what comes out, and the interest from investors to come to South Africa is very great.”<\/p>\n
Public Enterprise Minister Lynne Brown insisted on Thursday night that Eskom does not have an energy crisis because there is a solution.<\/p>\n
The minsister said that Eskom’s position was a “challenge”.<\/p>\n
Brown was speaking to journalists after the State of the Nation Address on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“The government takes the energy situation in the country very seriously,” Brown said<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why it has a war room that constitutes any department that affects energy in the country,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the almost most single important issue for growth in our economy and our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said the reason there were blackouts was because the grid was constrained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that more people are on the grid, the economy has grown and we haven’t kept up with generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said Zuma spoke about a longer term plan for energy which included renewable energy, nuclear energy and shale gas.<\/p>\n
She said the first unit of the new Medupi power station would come online in the next few weeks and Kusile next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won’t be an outright solution, but it will help get more megawatts on the grid,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
(With Sapa)<\/p>\n