The DA has insisted that its position on the declaration of a state of disaster over the energy crisis is consistent.
This is despite party leader John Steenhuisen last week threatening to take the measures to court, less than three months after he had called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare a state of disaster.
Last week Steenhuisen issued a statement describing Ramaphosa’s declaration of a national state of disaster as a ploy by the governing party to “abuse procurement processes and issue nonsensical regulations that have nothing to do with the electricity crisis”.
He said the DA said it would “not sit back and allow the ANC to abuse the electricity disaster it created to loot and further abuse the people of South Africa.
“Instead of punishing the people with a sweeping disaster declaration for the damage wrought by decades of ANC corruption and cadre deployment at Eskom, the DA has consistently called for urgent and focused interventions in the energy sector.
“We reiterate our call to urgently loosen the regulatory noose around the electricity system’s neck by incentivising massive private sector investment in generation, and removing impediments like localisation requirements and BEE to enable Eskom to recruit the skilled people it so desperately needs to speed up maintenance and unbundling.”
This was in stark contradiction to what Steenhuisen said in November 2022.
“Ramaphosa needs to declare a ring-fenced state of disaster around Eskom. This state of disaster needs to be declared now so disaster relief funding can be reprioritised to keep the open-cycle turbines running.
“This should have been done months ago, when he presented his energy response plan, and his refusal then to concede the urgency and scale of the disaster has left our grid on the brink of collapse."
The DA’s national spokesperson and member of the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) Cilliers Brink insisted that the positions were not contradictory.
“What the DA has called for is a ring-fenced set of interventions at Eskom, not for a national state of disaster under which the government can exercise wide-ranging powers that has [have] nothing to do with Eskom.
“If you look at NDZ’s [Cogta minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma] notice, it is not narrowly tailored to dealing with specific blockages to solving the problems at Eskom. It does not detail what laws and regulations will need to be abridged to enable the situation at Eskom to be stabilised.
“This opens the door for the kind of abuse suffered by South Africans under the Covid-19 lockdown, especially if NDZ is the responsible minister.
Brink argued that it would have been far better to bring a set of disaster measures to parliament that deal specifically with the situation at Eskom, as allowed for under section 44(2) of the constitution.
“For example, the requirement of local procurement in terms of B-BBEE and the PPPFA can be abridged in a lawful way," he said.
“We are opposed to the use of a national state of disaster. I am pointing to the wide-ranging and vague terms of the present declaration to make the point that section 27 is open to abuse in these circumstances.
“It is a constitutionally defective tool, which is why we filed an application in 2021 to have section 27 declared unconstitutional.
“We are saying that the Eskom disaster can be dealt with by dedicated laws, brought to parliament, narrowly tailored to assist Eskom's management to make quick and cost-effective decisions. This would be a ring-fenced approach, instead of the wide-open powers granted to government under section 27."
Brink admitted that Steenhuisen could have articulated the position better and said the party would use this week’s parliamentary replies to the Sona to further outline the DA’s position on the state of disaster and what could be done to overcome rolling blackouts.
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