Government must stop wasting taxpayer’s money and rather deliver electricity

Dear Editor

Build One South Africa (BOSA) notes, with shock, today’s response by Pravin Gordhan, Minister of Public Enterprises, to the Eskom court ruling in our favour handed down by the Gauteng North High Court, ordering him, as Government’s shareholder representative, to instate electricity supply to all public hospitals, schools and police stations, during loadshedding within 60 days.
In his response to the judgement, the Minister notes: “The department has studied the ruling and has determined through legal advice that the prudent step to take is to lodge an appeal to set aside the ruling and allow for the ongoing efforts to end load shedding to proceed without putting undue risk on the country’s grid infrastructure”

He continues: “While the department respects the independence of the courts, in this case the department believes that the judgment would have unintended consequences and undermine the very efforts to balance the protection of the rights that were ventilated in this case, with the need to stabilise and protect our grid infrastructure,”

Our position as Build One South Africa (BOSA) is clear: We originally brought the matter to court based on the gross violation of Human Rights, not only in the health, educational and security sectors, but across all spheres of South African society.

The fact that the court not only concurred, but, while showing deference to the separation of powers, was damning in its condemnation of Government’s derogation of its duty, provided all South Africans with a sense of imminent restoration of justice and reinstatement of their human rights.
In corroborating that: “the applicants have demonstrated that there have been infringements of fundamental Constitutional rights, brought about by failures of organs of state and that appropriate relief is justified and called for and that such relief can be granted”, the Judgement noted: “It is clear that, whatever the President and his cabinet Ministers averred, the consequences of policy decisions resulted in the current need by Eskom to continue to implement various levels of loadshedding. The applicant’s deponents described these consequences as disastrous and it had been labelled in Heads of Argument as amounting to a “human catastrophe”.

In his declaration that he plans to fight the court order to comply within 60 days, the Minister, on behalf of the President and the ANC Government in general once more proves that our Government has clearly long forgotten their pledges and mandates to the People, and are content to continue to violate the rights of the very citizens who voted them into power.

Both the potential collapse of the grid and budgetary constraints were raised by the Minsters and President’s legal counsel during arguments. These have been dealt with in public discussion, and in court, and need to be dismissed as, we urge Government to stop wasting time – and tax-payers’ money on frivolous court action – and get on with serving the needs of our people. Starting with complying with the court order and delivering electricity – in 60 days.

Concluding that he intends to reach out to the newly appointed Minister of Energy to have an open and frank discussion this week, and to share the BOSA 10 Point Power Plan.

“We are proud to have joined hands with such a diverse group of representatives across civil society, trade unions and political organisations to have achieved such a significant legal victory so early in BOSA’s history. We take our pledge as political leaders seriously – in and not yet in office – and will continue to fight for the Constitutional Rights of our citizens at all junctures and through all avenues available to us.

We look forward to serving our citizens faithfully for years to come. Until such time as we do get into Parliament, we urge the ruling party and those privileged to be voted into power to take their responsibilities as seriously as we do.”

Reagrds

Sbu Zondi
BOSA Spokesperson