DA leader John Steenhuisen has called for the removal of Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe. This was during his address following the recent power cuts, stating that solutions are needed to come to Eskom's aid. Steenhuisen said the power utility is at its worst and would soon collapse.
Although Eskom has said they were working on stabilising the grid, Steenhuisen claims that the reality is that the country will have more power cuts than usual.
"Ramaphosa and his ministers need to accept that they have failed and are incapable of solving this ongoing problem. South Africa is spiralling out of control yet it is in their "supposed capable hands." They need to bring in experts to help, no one will blame them," he said.

FIRE MANTASHE

Steenhuisen said another important step will be firing Mantashe. "He has had multiple failures yet he remains in this crucial position. He is responsible for and prevented the country's energy sector from making a recovery," said Steenhuisen. These past weeks the country has been dealing with constant blackouts, this comes  two months after Ramaphosa promised to roll out an emergency plan to address the crisis. He promised a maintenance budget to improve Eskom's power plants and enable it to buy more power from private producers.

REDUCING PRESSURE ON DEMAND

Ramaphosa's plans haven't made a difference thus far as it seems they are meant to provide long term solutions, instead of addressing the immediate problems. The President was left with no choice to come back home from international travel due to the electricity crisis at hand. In his weekly presidential newsletter, the president said, "Since late last week, Eskom has been forced to implement load shedding due to breakdowns at a number of power stations. The situation has been made worse by the depletion of emergency generation reserves such as pumped storage and diesel turbines and the need for these to be replenished. The severe load shedding of the last few days has reminded us how unstable our ageing power stations are. It has given greater urgency to the measures we announced two months ago to stabilise our electricity supply."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Eskom said boilers at coal-fired power stations are central to the electricity generation system. Boiler-tube leaks are a significant contributor to unplanned losses. Repairing a leak takes time as the boiler must be switched off and cooled before maintenance begins. They said load shedding will be implemented on stage 5 until Thursday morning where it could be reduced with one stage. They've apologised for the power cuts claiming it is their last resort to decrease pressure on demand.