As long as Eskom’s blackouts persist poverty will not be eliminated.
This was the strong message that Tintswalo Makhubele, secretary-general of the SA Congress Of Non-Profit Organisations (Sacono) sent to the ANC at the party’s NEC lekgotla on Sunday during her presentation on the effect blackouts have on communities and small businesses.
Makhubele said emerging farmers in Gauteng were counting losses caused by blackouts and have now called on the ANC to end outages or forget ever ending poverty.
Makhubele is part of a group of 50 cooperatives producing food and livestock while employing about 200 women and youth.
These emerging farmers produce their food in Eikenhof in southern Johannesburg and they depend on a constant supply of water and power.
Makhubele said when blackouts hit, the borehole pumps that supply water to the plants trip.
She said between September and December, the cooperatives had lost half a ton of produce due to blackouts. This translates to an estimated loss R24,000.
“I told the lekgotla that we are losing our business everyday because of load-shedding. Our borehole machines and motors breakdown because of the outages. We have already lost our harvest of cucumber, green pepper, spinach and tobacco because of load-shedding. We are not getting enough water for our plants.
“With those losses we lose income as a group because we depend on selling vegetables. When the vegetables do not get water they simply die. We told the ANC that they need to stop load-shedding quickly …Our core business is around job creation, poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihoods. We make sure that we employ the youth and women.
“Poverty will never end as long as there is load-shedding because it hampers our efforts of generating our own income,” Makhubele said.
The ANC NEC lekgotla sat down this weekend with power outages topping the agenda. It concluded its business on Monday. ANC leaders in government told the lekgotla they planned to rid the country of blackouts by early next year.
Makhubele said despite less production, cooperatives still wanted to give something to their clients to keep them happy.
“If a client wants 100 bunches we try to give him 70 and if they want 200 we give them 150. We don’t want to stop supply completely,” she said.
Cooperatives sell their produce to Soweto, Roodepoort, Eldorado Park, Klipspruit, Joburg Market and popular supermarkets.
Makhubele said she asked the ANC to go into communities and inform people what was being done to end blackouts and the times at which it is implemented.
“We said government needs to look for other sources of energy production so that we do not rely solely on Eskom. We proposed that government considers reopening the old power stations that have been closed over the years to increase generation capacity,” she said.
Two weeks ago, Eskom said due to the current performance of its power stations, blackouts would remain for the next two years.
dlaminip@sowetan.co.za
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