By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has given an assurance that there is no plan to privatise any of the three Eskom entities of generation, transmission and distribution currently being unbundled in line with a policy initially outlined in the ‘Eskom Roadmap’ of 2019.
“The Department of Public Enterprises and government are fully committed to the implementation of the roadmap and in retaining 100% control of these entities,” Gordhan said, describing some of the commentary as misinformation aimed at undermining public confidence in the process.
The National Union of Mineworkers (Num) said this week Gordhan was going ahead with the unbundling of Eskom without consulting them.
The union met with Eskom on Thursday where the power utility announced that it was going to transfer the company’s distribution assets to a new state-owned company.
“NUM remains opposed to the unbundling of Eskom. The power utility and Minister of Public Enterprises are unilaterally implementing this decision without proper consultation with key stakeholders such as unions and the public.
African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president, Collen Malatji, said Gordhan should not be permitted to continue allowing the privatisation of SOEs.
Malatji said if Gordhan is not stopped from selling SOEs, he will sell everything, including South Africans.
Gordhan has described Malatji’s statements as deliberate distortions of the truth and ill-considered utterances.
He said he wants to meet with the ANCYL over its attack on him.
In July this year, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula publicly called on Gordhan to act quickly in fixing issues at Transnet or else he’d be moved..
He said the facts about Eskom were deliberately distorted by those with vested interests who wanted to tarnish his name and undermine efforts by the state to fix State-Owned Entities.
He said Eskom will remain the holding company, with the three entities falling under it. The three entities will be wholly-owned by Eskom.
Government was not going to sell them.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in 2019 that Eskom would split into generation, distribution, and transmission entities to increase its performance and ensure reliable electricity supply.
The youth league said on Tuesday its national executive committee met and the issue of the performance of SOEs came under discussion.
“The NEC discussed and reflected on the state of our SOEs, the NEC is of the view that more must be done to improve the performance and internal capacity of our SOEs. The NEC is of the view that the SOEs are part of the instruments of development available to the democratic state to improve the socio-economic conditions of our people, and therefore handing them over to private hands with the sole purpose of profit maximisation is counter-revolutionary.
“It is our considered view that the privatisation of SOEs is not a solution to resolving the problems of loadshedding and the challenges at Transnet. We firmly believe that SOEs must serve as a strategic asset of the state to boost the economy and should be utilised to improve people’s lives with a business self-sustainability model,” said the ANCYL.
Gordhan is not the only cabinet member Malatji has laid into since he was elected to lead the governing party’s youth wing – which many had slammed for losing its bite.
Recently, he also fired a salvo at the Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi, calling for his head over failure to create jobs.
The league’s mother body, the ANC, has however defended Nxesi.
The governing party says while it encourages the youth league to be robust and outspokenly pursue the interests of young people, that should be done without denigrating personalities.