Former president Thabo Mbeki says he believes there was a systematic attempt to collapse key South African institutions like Eskom, leading to rampant and “deliberate” load shedding in the country.
He said the systematic collapse of key institutions had set in since about 2008, which was around the time he was booted out of government after a bruising defeat to Jacob Zuma at the 2007 Polokwane Conference.
Mbeki was forced to resign in September 2008, almost 10 months after losing to Zuma at the ANC’s elective conference in Polokwane.
Mbeki, who is the chancellor of the University of South Africa, was speaking during a dialogue hosted by the Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Relations.
Mbeki said the ruptures at Eskom, Transnet, the SA Police Service (SAPS), the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), and the SA Revenue Services (Sars) were a coordinated attack on the State.
He said there were elements who were hell-bent on ensuring that South Africa did not succeed.
Reflecting on load shedding, Mbeki claimed that the country’s first bout of load shedding was experienced in 2008, and big industries such as mines had to be shut down for a week.
He said it was wrongly reported that the cause of the load shedding was that Eskom leadership had approached the government in 1998 asking for new power stations, and the government had supposedly ignored them, leading to the first bout of load shedding in 2008.
“That story was cooked; it was false,” said Mbeki, who said the actual reason for the load shedding was that some power stations had run out of coal and had not replenished the coal supplies accordingly.
“They did not replenish the coal. There was not enough coal at the power stations. There was coal in the country,” said Mbeki, alluding to sabotage from within Eskom.
Describing former Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe as an old friend, Mbeki said Molefe dealt with load shedding by managing and repairing infrastructure, and there was no load shedding between 2014 and 2017.
“By the time load shedding comes back in 2017/18, you have new people who don’t behave in the way Brian Molefe behaves, why, I think it is deliberate,” said Mbeki.
In January 2021, Molefe blamed President Cyril Ramaphosa for load shedding.
Mbeki said the expensive Kusile power station, which has now cost taxpayers over R160 billion and is over eight years behind schedule, was a typical example of how the nation was being hindered.
Mbeki said the expensive Kusile power station, which has now cost taxpayers over R160 billion and is over eight years behind schedule, was a typical example of how the nation was being hindered.
Mbeki said Indian contractors were appointed to build Unit 1 at the power station, which they delivered in a much shorter period than expected and started producing electricity in 2018.
But things quickly went wrong when it was expected that the Indian engineers would have the contract extended.
“Then there’s a strange thing that happens. They expected their contract to be extended to build more units. Eskom says ‘get a Black Empowerment Equity (BEE) partner’.
“The Indians came with 50 engineers and technicians; they say if you have black engineers to join ours, Eskom says we don’t have that,” he said.
The contract was eventually terminated after the Indian firm failed to find a BEE partner.
“To this day, Kusile is still not finished; the Indians went home.
“I am saying it is deliberate; it is people who have wanted to produce this electricity crisis in the same way they wanted to create a revenue crisis at Sars.
“Look at Transnet, the police, the prosecution, all of these things are going wrong systematically; is it an accident?” Mbeki asked.
Mbeki said the systematic collapse of institutions from 2008 was not only fuelled by greed and corruption, but was a far more sinister attack on the State.
“There’s a whole process which takes place in this country which still we don’t understand, of a systematic process to ensure that the democratic republic does not succeed; that’s one of the things necessary for us to understand.
“None of the negative things that happened, none of them, are accidental. There is greed, there is corruption, but at the base of it is to make sure that we fail.
“It is a matter of strategic importance to understand what went wrong because there were deliberate processes put in by some people to make sure we fail,” he said.
