Mashaba slams City of Joburg's load-shedding moemish

If ActionSA is voted into power, it would fix the energy crisis by enabling independent power producers to supply electricity to the Johannesburg grid so residents become less reliant on Eskom.

Action SA leader Herman Mashaba campaigning for the 2021 local government elections.
Action SA leader Herman Mashaba campaigning for the 2021 local government elections.
Image: ANTONIO MUCHAVE

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has accused City of Joburg mayor Mpho Moerane of electioneering at the weekend by promising residents zero load-shedding, only to backtrack on his promise. 

Mashaba said this could not have happened at a better time as it reminds voters ahead of the local government elections on November 1 that the ANC is capable of making false promises rather than delivering basic services, a pattern it has maintained for years. 

Moerane’s attempt at preventing the execution of the blackouts must be understood against that background — yet another desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, a backlash from the voters in next week’s local government election — where voters are set to ring in the winds of change and deliver an ActionSA-led government to fix the City of Joburg from years of ANC mismanagement,” said Mashaba.

Mashaba added that if ActionSA emerged victorious after the election, it would fix the energy crisis by enabling independent power producers to supply electricity to the Johannesburg grid so residents become less reliant on Eskom.

“While we work on becoming independent from Eskom, we will stabilise our electricity infrastructure by increasing the budget available for repairs and maintenance and investing in new and upgraded infrastructure,” he said. 

The city came under fire after it failed to deliver on its promise not to implement load-shedding at the weekend after it said it had signed an extension of a power purchase agreement with Kelvin power station giving it an extra 220MW. 

TimesLIVE reported on Sunday Moerane was furious with the power utility as the city had taken all possible steps to prevent power outages. He accused Eskom of heavy-handedness and vowed to take it to court. 

On Monday evening, however, the city backtracked and pledged to co-operate with Eskom by implementing load-shedding while both entities look for lasting solutions to the power crisis. 

“City power will follow and implement the directive of the system operator and implement load-shedding on its customers in the city of Johannesburg as required. The collective understanding by both entities is to protect the national power grid while reducing the impact of load-shedding,” said spokesperson Isaac Mangena. 

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