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Sunday Times reports that ANC leaders were caught off guard by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of an electricity minister in his state of the nation address on Thursday.
Department of Mineral Resources & Energy (DMRE) Minister Gwede Mantashe, who is also ANC national chair, said he viewed the newly created ministry of electricity as nothing but a project management intervention to deal specifically with load-shedding. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mantashe said the electricity minister would be limited to dealing with the load-shedding crisis while he and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan would continue with their respective work as it related to energy. This “project manager”, he stated, would pull things together under one roof, in a similar way to the work now done by the National Energy Crisis Committee. He added: “I have no problem with the announcement because electricity was not in DMRE anyway, so I cannot be unhappy with an announcement that does not impact on the department that I lead.” Mantashe said as far as he was concerned, the new ministry would have no bearing on his duties in the department of energy. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, like Mantashe, said he viewed the ministry as a temporary measure which was not a deviation from the governing party’s conference resolution to hand Eskom over to the DMRE minister. A source in the ANC NEC said: “Even Gwede was caught by surprise. I think he knew something was coming but what that was he did not know. Gwede’s reaction said it all. He said this is a project manager. What is that?” ANC-tripartite alliance partners such as Cosatu had also not been consulted on the matter, said the labour federation’s president, Zingiswa Losi.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mawande Amashabalala & Kgothatso Madisa at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Mantashe’s hopes of controlling Eskom dashed as a new minister is set to take over, at Mail & Guardian (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page