Johannesburg Bureau
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – AS the government seems at its wits’ end regarding the issue, load shedding-laden South African citizens heaped praises to the otherwise controversial but on-point Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) when it articulated solutions to the crisis.
EFF’s conduct and quality presentation was a major shift from its combative conduct that interrupted the State of the Nation Address (SONA) by President Cyril Ramaphosa last Thursday.
The parties returned to Parliament this week to enable parties representing South Africans in the legislature to discuss the SONA and for Ramaphosa to respond to their questions.
The load shedding crisis dominated proceedings and the EFF dominated the debate, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) seemingly buying into the strategies proposed by the EFF to resolve the power outages.
EFF’s Deputy Commander-In-Chief, Floyd Shivambu, led the opposition’s charge on the electricity crisis and articulated measures to resolve the situation.
Shivambu’s eloquently researched presentation did not go unnoticed. It captured the attention of all races, tribes and creed.
The silence to Shivambu’s presentation to Parliament was enough evidence of the endorsement of the EFF’s energy crises solutions.
Craigh Jonas, who listened to Shivambu’s proposed energy solutions said: ” (He has been) spitting facts for 16 minutes straight.”
Germaine Ludik declared: “Can’t believe I have to agree with Floyd for once. Wish he and his cohorts would speak more like this rather than the crazy things they shout half the time.”
Ludik lamented that Africa was impoverished despite its vast resources.
“Remove the greedy politicians and get them out of the way so that the people of South Africa can get on with making South Africa prosperous again,” stated Ludik.
Nosipho Sobekwa reacted: “That is what we, educated people, call thorough research. Thank you EFF. Well done Mr Shivambu.”
Nkosinathi Baleni also heaped praise on Shivambu.
“This man is dynamite. Even those who hate him were very attentive to his immaculately delivered speech.”
Donald Masha remarked, “The Articulation of Floyd was above his level.”
Mbongiseni Vilakazi asserted, “10 out of 10 there’s nothing more that needs to be said.”
Raymond Sepheu argued: “Floyd Shivambu has given the ANC a few options and solutions. But the problem is, he does not understand that the ANC is being killed.”
Mahan Naidu voiced: “What Floyd has narrated is what the intelligent people in SA have always understood,but the ruling party has failed in every way because a lot of them lack logic and proper education. That is the tragedy. So far the present president has failed miserably and it is a sad sad situation.”
Earlier on in parliament, Shivambu came with a litany of practical solutions, which left all political parties shell shocked with accuracy and practicality of EFFs energy crisis solutions.
Although the EFF preferred South Africa to tackle the energy crisis with a deal with Russia and China ahead of the West, Shivambu insisted a deal with Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom would be a game-changer.
“We speak decisively on what is to be done in relation to the electricity crisis confronting society. Many of the speakers that came here never presented anything tangible and believable as to what is to be done,” Shivambu said.
He indicated : “The illusion” that “South Africa is immediately going to discontinue the usage of coal as baseload energy because that is the only way we can sustain our electricity”.
He added: “We need to plug into the national grid the Floating Storage and Regasification Units. The secretary-general of the ANC [Fikile Mbalula] will not know what that is because in the schooling system before tertiary they don’t teach that.”
“Due to those who are seeking bribes and trying to extort the people who awarded that bid, the karpowerships cannot be plugged into the grid to alleviate the energy crisis we have. The reality is that, immediately, you have no other solution except plugging in the FSRU from Turkey, Russia and China.”
He said the ruling ANC would be out of power paving way for the EFF, which sought to practically address the country’s “man-made crises.”
“We need to talk about these things because we know that you’re going to be out of power, we’re going to take power as the EFF. We do not want to take power under darkness,” Shivambu said.
He also seized the opportunity to criticise president Cyril Ramaphosa of “putting the country in reverse gear”, a move he argued destroyed the gains the country had made.
“Everything we’ve made progress on is going backwards. We never thought that we would have a crisis. Who ever thought we would have water shedding? We have job losses because of this man. He’s taking the country in reverse gear the same way he did when he was utilising his first car,” Shivambu said.
He also suggested South Africa should explore other energy synergies with neighbouring countries such as Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa to ensure adequate power supply.
Presently South Africa generates about 58 095 megawatts (MW) of electricity yet with a deficit of 10 000MW.
The southern African nation seeks about 20 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power generation capacity by 2030 with a generation of 77,834 MW of electricity by 2030.
– CAJ News