The ANC wants its leaders and deployees in government to stop making impossible promises to the public on critical matters like load-shedding after identifying these as among its liabilities ahead of next year’s elections.
This was one of the key issues discussed at the ANC’s election workshop on Monday.
The move seems to be a snub to electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa who last month presented an energy action plan to the cabinet and the ANC national working committee that said load-shedding would be ended by December.
Those who attended the meeting this week told how the party resolved that its ministers responsible for the supply of electricity and other sources of energy should, in particular, stop attaching timelines to the ending of load-shedding.
The party resolved that timelines were not helping its case because they were impossible to stick to.
Instead, the ANC elections workshop directed its government deployees and other senior party figures to be “brutally honest” about the state of affairs at Eskom, including improved communication on how the power utility had been sabotaged.
Several party officials said this was one of the ways the ANC was hoping to regain public trust and improve its prospects ahead of what is expected to be a fiercely contested national election.
“We will be brutally honest about what’s going on. I mean, you need to tell people,” said an NEC insider.
“In fact, you need to mobilise our people to be defenders of this thing because if infrastructure is sabotaged clearly it’s a political agenda, so we need to be able to say: ‘Look out for these people who are sabotaging infrastructure so you don’t have lights, and if you don’t have lights the economy is not working and you’re not employed.’
“So our messaging is going to be around that one, that there are acts of sabotage and you can’t always blame the ANC. The ANC is not the cops. Where is the intelligence? The president has asked to deploy the army [and that's] serious.”
We can’t anchor our strategy on saying load-shedding will be resolved by December ... We do not control all the forces at play
— ANC member
President Cyril Ramaphosa is said to have approved this approach as the party heads to arguably its toughest election.
“It’s not going to be an easy election. The ANC cannot commit to timelines because we’re not running Eskom.
"The engineers are not deployees of the ANC," said another insider who attended the workshop.
Another source said the party decided its load-shedding messaging should not be built around timelines but what was being done to end it.
“Our strategy will never be framed on load-shedding being resolved any time soon. If it’s resolved it will be a plus but we have a duty to be honest to our people and stick to the current developments,” said the source.
“We will just be honest to our people in that we have load-shedding and we are trying our level best to deal with it.
“We can’t anchor our strategy on saying load-shedding will be resolved by December. What if something happens? We do not control all the forces at play — what if you don’t get the parts that are needed? What are you going to say?
“It means you will have to hide under the table because you can no longer go to the people and say 'vote for us' because your strategy was wrong.”
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