Mail & Guardian reports that senior ANC and alliance leaders say the politicisation of Eskom’s workforce will be a key challenge to any turnaround plan at the state-owned power utility.  

In part this situation was claimed to be due to the decision by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) to contest the 2019 election with its newly formed Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party.  But Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim last week dismissed as “cheap propaganda” suggestions that the union’s stance on the ailing utility was political and aimed at harming the ANC or bolstering the union’s own political party.  “It is workers’ interest that we are pushing.  We have to be the voice of the working class in all sectors of society,” he said.  Eskom is on a collision course with unions over its plans to unbundle and because of its deals with independent power producers (IPPs).  Jim said Numsa’s stance on renewables, privatisation and unbundling was consistent with its ideological outlook and the positions were adopted as far back as 2013.  The Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party is contesting the elections after a decision taken in 2013, which culminated in Numsa’s expulsion from labour federation Cosatu.  The National Union of Mineworkers’ Paris Mashego said his union, which is the largest at Eskom, had asked Numsa to join some meetings about the utility with ANC and government leaders, but the metalworkers’ union had refused because they were now a “different political party”.

• Read the full original of Natasha Marrian’s report in the above regard at Mail & Guardian

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