Ramokgopa crossed a line when he lied to South Africans

Dear Editor

• The Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, and the ANC government are deliberately lying to the South African public about the power crisis and load-shedding.
• Shortly after Ramokgopa claiming a turning point had been reached and-load shedding would not worsen, the country experienced stage 6 load shedding, with a potential risk of escalating to stage 7 or higher.
• South Africans must ignore updates from Ramokgopa and other ANC officials and trust only the reports issued by Eskom and its appointed public relations officials.

Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, crossed a line when he – and the ANC government, took a decision to deliberately lie to South Africans that “a turning point in the power crisis had been reached” and “load-shedding won’t be rising to higher levels”. Not long after he made these grandiose statements, the country was plunged into a punishing stage 6 load-shedding schedule, with a potential risk that it could be escalated to stage 7 or higher.

For this reason, and acting in the public interest, the DA is urging all South Africans to ignore any Eskom generation system updates from Ramokgopa – or any ANC government official, because of their deliberate plan to provide misleading information for political reasons. Rather, people should only trust system update reports/statements issued by Eskom and its appointed public relations officials.

To this end, I have written to the Eskom acting CEO, Calib Cassim, requesting that Eskom takes on the responsibility of providing weekly system update reports/statements. While load-shedding is completely intolerable and should be addressed as a matter of urgency, it is deeply insulting for Ramokgopa to provide misleading information to guide public opinion on load-shedding for political purposes.

The fact that Ramokgopa has not issued a public apology on this deliberate misinformation campaign, after we asked him to last week, confirms what we have always suspected – that Ramakgopa was to be the public face of an ANC government-sanctioned public relations project to intentionally mislead South Africans on the load-shedding crisis.

Having endured load-shedding for 16 years, there was no reason whatsoever for anyone – least of all Ramokgopa and Ramaphosa, to lie to South Africans on the power crisis. It is an acknowledged fact that the ANC government has run out of ideas to fix load-shedding.

We reiterate our position that Ramokgopa’s disingenuous attempts to influence public opinion, through misleading information on the load-shedding crisis, is grossly irresponsible and must be condemned outright. South Africans have endured irreparable damage to their lives as a result of load-shedding, they should not be disrespected through lies by individuals in government.

Regards

Samantha Graham-Maré MP
DA Shadow Minister of Electricity