Having saved his leadership of the ANC with a powerful intervention against resignation, is mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe, just a month later, trying to pick a fight with President Cyril Ramaphosa?
It sure looks like it and when you step back and consider it from a distance, perhaps it should be no surprise. An interview Mantashe gave News24 has been in the headlines for his efforts to relieve himself of any responsibility for load-shedding and for the dreadful condition of Eskom and the general economy.
Writing here last week, energy academic and expert Anton Eberhard recalled telling Mantashe back in 2019 that delays in procuring new power for the grid meant he’d be blamed for load-shedding. Mantashe responded that if that were to happen, he would simply blame Pravin Gordhan, the public enterprises minister, who oversees Eskom.
Blaming Eskom is what he is doing now. But the latest interview went further. Mantashe unmistakably drew the president into the circle of fire, challenging Ramaphosa, just days away from what must be a fairly substantial cabinet reshuffle, to back him.
Harking back to an ANC conference decision last month to move control of Eskom from public enterprises to mineral resources and energy, Mantashe says it puts Ramaphosa in a difficult position.
Mantashe unmistakably drew the president into the circle of fire, challenging Ramaphosa, just days away from what must be a fairly substantial cabinet reshuffle, to back him
“I’ve also noticed that there is an agitated … let me describe it as liberal analysts and journalists against that [Eskom decision],” he tells his interviewer. “So that puts the president in a very awkward situation because he must choose between the liberals and the delegates of the ANC.”
By “liberals” Mantashe probably means whites like Eberhard; Mark Swilling, chair of the Development Bank of Southern Africa; and perhaps Crispian Olver, executive director of the presidential climate commission. All three are close to Ramaphosa and fiercely oppose moving Eskom to energy or anywhere near Mantashe’s control.
But Mantashe takes no prisoners. “I was part of the [December ANC] conference. I know the feelings of the delegates of the ANC,” he says in the interview. It is an outrageous, almost certainly calculated, attempt to create yet another political accident for Ramaphosa.
So much for the sweeping December victory. What does Ramaphosa do now? Does he fire Mantashe, a man he has leant on for his entire presidency thus far, and who has been re-elected ANC chair? I doubt it. Does he move him? To tourism? Culture?
This is political insurrection from someone who knows exactly how to do it. If Mantashe is to now reduce Ramaphosa’s leadership to either backing white liberals or his own party, he could destroy what he has just recreated. Maybe that was always the point.
Ideologically he is well to the left of Ramaphosa and would have few misgivings whipping up support for other mad ANC resolutions on the Reserve Bank, land expropriation. Finance minister Enoch Godongwana is also on the fence, wondering how the Mantashe tantrum ends.
Mantashe insists he is not responsible for building power stations. But he has failed at the job he says he does have — to create passage for more megawatts on the grid. Thus far there’s been little and despite his protestations, not much is actually under construction. And he will say anything to avoid accounting. Load-shedding could be ended in 12 months, he says, but still pushes for a 20-year contract to park Karpowership floating power stations in our ports. His is literally the slow boat to China.
If Ramaphosa is to succeed in stabilising South Africa’s energy supply, he needs the freedom to override red tape. He could leave the mining industry to Mantashe and move energy — either to environment or as a stand-alone department. But without Mantashe he’d be vulnerable to constant pressure to unravel Eskom’s corporate structure and give it to bureaucrats to run.
Or he could fire Gordhan and get a minister at public enterprises to quickly complete the planned establishment of Eskom’s transmissions business as an independent company, with a mission to raise funds and get the grid ready for more renewable energy and perhaps a gas-fired peaking plant. Gordhan took nearly three years to replace the late Jabu Mabuza as Eskom chair. He is too slow now and has lost his political clout.
Ramaphosa, meanwhile, has 10 days, probably fewer, to reshuffle his cabinet. There’s almost no talent left in the party, but it cannot be that no cabinet meets in this crisis month. To convene the current cabinet would be a political humiliation. To let it slide would be, well, typical ...
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