Hello Fellow DA supporters
Bitou Municipality has today approved our application for a show of support against the current loadshedding crisis that is currently gripping South Africa.
The DA are organising a major march to the ANC headquarters at Luthuli House in Johannesburg on 25 January against the ANC-engineered electricity crisis.
In Bitou we are also suffering under the current electricity crisis. Electricity tariffs have increased by more than 650% since the #loadshedding crisis started in 2007.
Electricity blackouts are now the single biggest crisis that South Africa has faced in the history of our democracy. Loadshedding has devastated the economy – costing the country nearly 4 billion rand a day, pushing more and more people into poverty, unemployment and crime, and driving away investment.
The DA Bitou Constituency invites all Bitou residents to join us to voice our anger at the ANC’s destruction of our country’s energy infrastructure and economy, and to demand urgent solutions to this escalating crisis.
This will take the form of a mass gathering in Main Street on Wednesday, 25 January 2023 at 12pm where we will form a human chain along the length of Main Street.
South Africans needs to show the ANC in no uncertain terms that we are united against their uncaring and unfair treatment of households and businesses, and that we will not accept it any longer.
We are fed up with paying for ANC corruption and mismanagement. We do not accept, and we cannot afford, the 18,65% increase this year or the 12,74% next year, which is a total increase of 33.77% over the next two years.
Households are battling to put food on the table. Businesses are struggling to pay their staff.
What is the DA Proposing to Solve the Crisis?
South Africans are tired of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s endless plans, commissions, and crisis meetings. They want electricity now. The DA’s short-term interventions to improve power supply, while we wait for renewable energy power from IPPs to come online, include declaring a ring-fenced State of Disaster around Eskom and the electricity sector.
This will:
- allow the emergency reprioritisation of funds already ear marked for SOE bailouts in order to procure diesel for the Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGT) peaking plants. This conditional short-term intervention will enable OCGT’s to operate at full capacity, which will ensure that loadshedding is decreased by two stages up until the end of March.
- exempt Eskom from all obstacles relating to efficient spending and rapid decision-making such as localization and BBBEE legislation.
- allow for the renegotiation of Karpowership contracts and the connection of the power ships to the grip to fill the supply shortfall. The contracts must strictly be no more than 5-7 years.
- compel government to provide incentives for rooftop solar installations and enable citizens and businesses to sell any excess electricity that they produce to the grid.
- employ experienced engineers and managers to run the various entities of Eskom and stop all political interference in the energy sector.
- provide improved security to safeguard power generating assets thereto.
In addition to these short-term measures, the DA has proposed medium to long term measures to fix the electricity crisis and these can be accessed at https://www.da.org.za/fixing–the–electricity–crisis .
If South Africa is to solve the electricity crisis, it is important that the energy sector is opened up to new renewable energy sources of energy from Independent Power Producers.
Where the DA governs
Currently, around 90% of Western Cape municipalities allow small-scale renewable energy to feed into the grid. 20 municipalities compensate households or businesses that feed excess energy back into the network. The City of Johannesburg has allocated 30% of its 70-billion budget towards boosting City Power. The City of Ekurhuleni has approved 47 independent power producers that will connect directly to the City‘s electricity grid to offset the impact of load-shedding.
Under a DA national government, loadshedding will be fixed through introducing competition into the energy sector, diversifying the country’s energy sources to introduce more renewables and bringing down the cost of electricity.
Please also sign our petition that will be available in Main Street.
Dave Swart
Chairperson
DA Bitou Constituency
