Knives out for Ramaphosa to ‘pluck up the courage’ to deal with Eskom crisis

With the power utility failing to keep the lights on, citizens have now questioned the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa to deal with the Eskom board and his cabinet minsters serving in the Energy and Public Enterprises portfolios respectively.

The country has been plagued to darkness by Eskom, following crucial loss of its generating capacity units and further worsened by the labour protests where the power supply’s workers downed tools last week.

While it is reported that heads are rolling in government, residents have called on Ramaphosa to fix his house and maintain stability at the crippling Eskom.

It is believed that both Public Enterprise minister Pravin Gordhan and Energy minister Gwede Manatshe do not see eye-to-eye and are allegedly playing a blaming game for the recurring crisis at Eskom.

The embattled utility was forced to roll out different stages of load shedding, where the first-to-be implemented stage 6 was rolled out for two consecutive days.

Eskom’s leadership has been labeled as ‘overwhelmed, inept and out of depth’, and communities have waged attacks on Ramaphosa to consider dissolution of the Eskom board and the sacking of Gordhan and Mantashe.

With the aggrieved anger expressed by many, Kasi Voice News resorted to various areas in Matjhabeng to see how small business have taken a beating due to the unreliable power supply.

Petunia Nkahle who runs a Fruit and Veg business struggles to order things online as the network coverage is constantly poor due to load shedding.

She says this has forced her to go beyond her normal schedule to do her work, as she has turned into the old fashion way of travelling to the market supplier to fetch her goods instead of ordering online.

“I now have to wake up early in the morning to go straight to the supplier to place orders and luckily on the same day I will get what I want, but at some days you find that products you want are out of stock and will have to place an order for another particular day, it’s really frustrating,” said Nkahle.

She says that due to the blackouts she has lost an income as her customers have opted to go to other suppliers.

“We hope the President attends to this matter at the earliest convenience we are suffering honestly,” she added.

In Thabong, a famously known supermarket Momentum, is battling to prepare fast food for consumers due to load shedding.

The supermarket shop owner says they are running at loss instead of profit since the reoccurring of blackouts last week.

“It is hard for us to sell fast food now, because we rely heavily on electricity and the back up generator consumes large quantities of petrol as we also have to keep the refrigerators switched on as they store liquids and meat,” said the store owner.

He added that, this has affected his business enormously and he believes that President Ramaphosa has to step in to save the ailing power utility.

Seqhaqhabola soft porridge runner, Bokang Lehloenya said she relies heavily on power supply and due to load shedding, she is not able to prepare her instant porridge, Lehloenya said she’s now considering to buy herself a gas stove and this will be a tragic loss for her, as she’s already battling with profit.

“I’m now left with no choice but to use my own income to purchase a gas stove, while we are having economic challenges to generate revenue this makes things terrible for us, we didn’t budget for gas stoves because we knew we have Eskom on board, and the worse part we buy electricity, but we are subjected to this, is truly uncalled for,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Luyanda Duku)