By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former President Thabo Mbeki says the first time South Africa experienced a national electricity shutdown, known as load-shedding, was in January 2008.
“It was a national shutdown. The mines closed for a whole week. It was a serious crisis,” Mbeki told the students.
Mbeki was addressing the students at the Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs.
“The argument was that Eskom had told the government in 1998 that there must be investment in new generation capacity and infrastructure.”
“The narrative was that the government did not listen, which caused the blackouts in January 2008. That story was false. That story was cooked up.”
He said the true reason for load-shedding in January 2008 was because the people in charge of the power stations did not do what they were supposed to do – replenish coal.
“The power stations ran out of coal. It was not because there was no coal in the country. The people inside Eskom decided ‘let’s shut it down’,” Mbeki said.
“The lie was told that the government was to blame for load-shedding because of a lack of investment. It was not true.”
Mbeki added that when Brian Molefe was appointed as Eskom’s chief executive, load-shedding came to an end.
He credited Molefe and his colleagues for focusing on power station maintenance, improving reliability, and ending load-shedding.
Mbeki said many commentators “would find many different reasons for the resolution of load-shedding during Molefe’s time as CEO instead of looking at maintenance”.
After Molefe left, load-shedding returned. Mbeki said it was because the new Eskom management “did not behave like Brian Molefe behaved”.
Mbeki said the new Eskom leadership deliberately did not maintain the power stations, which caused breakdowns and the return of rotational power cuts.
He also weighed in on the moonshot pact, saying it is a group of people who are opposed to the African National Congress (ANC), “They can’t say anything new.”
“As I tried to listen to them I came across the two new parties that I never heard of spectrum & Isanco was surprised to see the latter there” Mbeki said. He further said its unfortunate that we don’t have time to discuss the history of SANCO.
The former president also lamented the use of slogans like Kill the Boer the Farmer by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema.
Arguably, the most notable aspect of the EFF10th year anniversary celebrations was Malema’s leading of the 95 000 strong crowd in chanting an apartheid-era struggle (or liberation) song.