Loadshedding: Time to Pull the Plug on the ANC

The following was featured in a leaflet handed out in January during our public tabling sessions

The ANC’s disastrous management of our public electricity utility, ESKOM, has yet again plunged the country into darkness. Gone are the days when stage 5 or 6 loadshedding were “extraordinary” measures. 2023 holds no hope of relief – instead, ESKOM projects that blackouts will soon be worse than what we experienced in 2022, which already set records for hours lost to loadshedding. Of course, this has enormous consequences, not only on the already-stagnating economic growth and plunging of more people into the vast pool of unemployment, but also on every-day life. 

Lives are recklessly thrown into chaos as working class people have to navigate unsafe dark streets on their way to work, home or school. Workplaces need to constantly stop and start, hospitals are forced to invest in expensive generators to ensure life saving treatments can continue. Additionally schools cannot utilise electrical equipment and households struggle to cook, keep food from spoiling, ensure homework and assignments are completed, and so on. 

On top of this, NERSA has just approved an 18.65% increase in electricity tariffs on top of a historic cost of living crisis, meaning we will pay more while getting less electricity. Meanwhile, the government has no problem refusing inflation-matching wages for public sector workers while hammering the entire working class with tariff increases over double the rate of inflation!

The ANC has looted and destroyed public services and SOEs!

• Loadshedding is the new “normal”. They have spent years neglecting electricity infrastructure, letting it decay as the population and demand increased.
• SAA was gutted and sold for a penny to the private market
• The railway system has collapsed, especially passenger rail. And the destruction of freight railway has led to tragic and extreme road accidents such as the Boksburg explosion and countless collisions involving coal trucks.
• Budget cuts to healthcare, education and infrastructure spending affect the working class disproportionately. Many communities do not have access to running water, and in communities where there is running water, there is constant interruption to supply. These constant cuts to public spending in turn lead to schools closing, dysfunctional healthcare and increase of destructive and deadly fires in poor working class communities.
• Understaffing and underpayment of public sector workers means the working class is deprived of quality services.
• Those fighting corruption, from local government to national level, from schools to universities, etc., are assassinated by criminal syndicates mainly made up of ANC “Cadres”.

It’s a complete indictment on Ramaphosa’s posturing about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – how does a country “benefit” from a technological “revolution” when there is no electricity for tech to run? But the solution of privatisation or “unbundling” of ESKOM as peddled by the opportunistic pro-business DA and private sector, poses an even darker future. It will allow even more rampant tariff increases forced on the public so that companies can extract even more profits from regular people. Those who cannot pay will simply have to stay in the dark with permanent loadshedding. Although Ramaphosa stated that he asked ESKOM to delay implimenting the tariff increases, his administration has already proved that it is incapable of addressing the electricity crisis. The fact that loadshedding has drastically increased over the years shows that the problems are worsening. 

The ANC has failed to protect ESKOM and other SOEs from corruption and mismangement. Thereby creating favourable conditions for the ruling class to call for privatization of SOEs. However, such a step would ultimatley bolster the ruling class.The crisis in ESKOM is not a crisis of it being a State Owned Entity (SOE). It’s a crisis of management – and it is managed by the bosses’ class and its allies in the ANC. The solution to the crisis lies in direct management led by working class councils rather than in more private ownership.

The ANC, making it abundantly clear that they serve the bosses’ class, want ESKOM and all other SOEs to run as private companies do: through cutting wages, cutting corners on maintenance, lack of investment in public infrastructure and green energy production, parasitic tenders with other private companies, exploiting the environment as much as possible, alongside fat paychecks and bonuses for executives and lucrative tenders for their associates. 

This all means that the public is in fact subsidising private corporations. SOEs, in their current configuration, are simply piggy banks of profiteering for the ANC and their cronies. The working class should not bear the brunt of the failure of SOEs under capitalist rule. We must fight back to stop the era of loadshedding and looting of our public services and utilities.

We Demand:

• Support GIWUSA’s and other progressive organisations calling for a national shutdown.
• Reject NERSA’s 18.65% tariff increase.
• Organise a programme of rolling mass action led by workers, communities and youth to fight for genuine nationalisation of SOEs under the democratic control of the working class and in the interest of all of society. 
• Place Eskom under the direct democratic control and management of Recovery and Reconstruction Councils made up of their workers and communities. These councils would bring in accountable expertise as needed and develop a turnaround strategy to reorientate ESKOM to serve the interests of our communities and not ANC fat cats and multinational consulting firms. 
• An  end to outsourced sub-contracts and backroom  BEE deals – they are not in the interest of the black majority but benefit a few politically connected tender-preneurs and lead to the worst exploitation of workers in precarious employment 
• Create at least one million quality jobs on a living wage in a real mass public works programme and rapidly train a workforce that can address the failing infrastructure of ESKOM; build and operate the factories needed to urgently produce the equipment and technology needed for rolling out more sustainable green energy such as wind, solar and small-scale hydro power, in order to end the reliance on coal, nuclear and diesel that destroys the planet and impact our health; retrofit and build new public housing to be more energy efficient; rapidly connect all people living in SA to the electric grid in order to end dangerous and exploitative “illegal” connections; energy-efficient mass public transport including expansion of long-distance passenger and freight rail. 
• An end to state-subsidised electricity to energy-intensive users. Trade unions and other working class organisations must struggle for the nationalisation of the banks, mines, manufacturing industries and mega farms under democratic control of the working class. In this way, we can plan our economy for the social good, including the production and distribution of our energy resources, in the most sustainable and equitable way, including urgent measures to address the climate crisis.
• The ANC must go! SAFTU must convene the Working Class Summit without further delays. This summit should throw open its doors to all organised and unorganised labour, including public service workers in COSATU fighting for decent wages, and immediately discuss the building of a mass workers party that can be formed through struggle by new layers of radicalised youth and workers, on an unapologetic socialist program.