President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended the appointment of an electricity minister in the presidency.
While no announcement has been made on who the minister is, Ramaphosa defended the move he announced during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) when he was responding to the debate on Thursday, which raised many questions and lambasted his leadership over the past two days in parliament.
During his seventh Sona in Cape Town last Thursday, Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster to deal with the power blackout crisis. He also announced he will be appointing a minister of electricity in his office who will focus solely on ending blackouts.
The decision was highly criticised.
“The reality is that the resolution of the energy crisis requires effective coordination across several departments and public entities,” he said.
“It requires the undivided attention of a political principal who does not need to split their time and energies among different important responsibilities. This appointment will ensure that there is a minister who is ultimately responsible for resolving load-shedding and who is able to work with all fellow cabinet ministers, departments and entities to do so.
“Some have suggested that the appointment of the minister will cause confusion and fragmentation, and that it might also result in turf wars among the ministers who deal with energy and Eskom,” he said.
“That's not the case,” he said.
“The minister of electricity will be focused day-in and day-out only on addressing the load-shedding crisis, working together with the management of Eskom and the board. The minister of mineral resources and energy deals with matters of energy policy as well as mineral resources.
“The minister of public enterprises is executing the recommendations of the presidential review commission as well as the state-owned enterprises council in relation to the ownership and the governance of state-owned enterprises. The minister of public enterprises will therefore continue to work on the restructuring of Eskom as well as other state-owned enterprises until then,” he said.
Ramaphosa also took a swipe at opposition parties who, over the past two days, blasted his leadership style, saying everything under him had failed. He said instead of tabling ideas that could bring solutions to some of the country's challenges, they instead used the debate to depict a country that's in chaos.
“Rather than present a balanced assessment of the state of the nation, they have resorted to dishonest and self-serving rhetoric.
“Rather than acknowledge the grave damage caused to our country by state capture, by the effects of a devastating global pandemic or by the worst public violence in the history of our democracy, some of these honourable members have failed to come up with practical suggestions or solutions that can resolve the many problems our nation faces today,” Ramaphosa said.
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