Eskom surrendered to global commercial interests, says Zuma

Former South African President, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma has warned that there are moves to privatize Eskom, strategic State assets and surrender key functions of the State to international global interests.

Addressing the media in Sandton, on Saturday, Zuma reminded the country that as a developmental State, [government] had the key objective of bringing electricity to every village and every home through Eskom.

However, according to the former president, Eskom is now being surrendered to international commercial interests for certain individuals to profit from the citizens’ need for electricity.

“Those doing this, use the State Capture as an excuse to divert the public’s attention from what is really happening. In 2015, my government ended load shedding until I left office at the start of 2018.

“This load shedding was stopped for 3 years in the time of professionals such as Mr. Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko,” Zuma stated.

A few hours after that speech, Koko confirmed Zuma’s assertion on his twitter account that indeed under his leadership they managed to stop load shedding for three years.

“We did not have Medupi and Kusile, and proudly met the demand of 35900MW. We burned 10 million litres of diesel in 12 months in 2017. Today, De Ruyter is burning 50 million litres of diesel in a month,” Koko specified, seemingly drawing attention to shocking levels of incompetence and a likely mismanagement of public funds.

Following that three-year period of no loadshedding, Zuma claims that it resumed immediately after certain agreements were concluded with Independent Power Producers and has never stopped since then.

“It is public knowledge that a few of these power producers had invested millions into the campaign of one of the candidates at the 2017 [ANC] Nasrec Conference.

“During my tenure as president, we had intended to harness nuclear power to develop the energy mix. Civil society organizations were mobilized by those wanting to sell electricity to the public which is generated by the free sun of Africa.

“We now live in a country where it is normal to have the power switched off two or three times a day.

“Our coal powered power stations are being neglected and being set up for collapse while all our coal gets shipped to the very same countries who are giving us loans to close our power stations while they use our coal to generate electricity for themselves,” Zuma highlighted.