President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday evening declared a national state of disaster to respond to the electricity crisis and its effects.
Speaking during his speech at the state of the Nation Address, the president said this comes after The National Disaster Management Centre has consequently classified the energy crisis and its impact as a disaster.
“The state of disaster will enable us to provide practical measures that we need to take to support businesses in the food production, storage, and retail supply chain, including for the rollout of generators, solar panels, and uninterrupted power supply,” Ramaphosa said.
Power utility Eskom has been rolling out scheduled blackouts, or load shedding, across the country as it tries to protect the country’s grid from total collapse.
He said the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma gazetted the declaration of the State of Disaster, which will begin with immediate effect.
Ramphosa said where technically possible, it would enable the country to exempt critical infrastructure such as hospitals and water treatment plants from load shedding.
"And it will enable us to accelerate energy projects and limit regulatory requirements while maintaining rigorous environmental protections, procurement principles, and technical standards," he said.
Ramaphosa said he will appoint a Minister of Electricity to the Presidency to assume full responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity crisis response, including the work of the National Energy Crisis Committee.
"The Minister will focus full-time and work with the Eskom board and management on ending load shedding and ensuring that the Energy Action Plan is implemented without delay," he said.
The president said to remove any confusion, the Minister of Public Enterprises will remain the shareholder representative of Eskom and steer the restructuring of Eskom, ensure the establishment of the transmission company, oversee the implementation of the just energy transition programme, and oversee the establishment of the SOE Holding Company.
"The process of restructuring the government will allow us to determine the positioning of various areas of responsibilities and how best the various ministries," he said.
Ramaphosa said the Auditor-General would be brought in to ensure continuous monitoring of expenditure, to guard against any abuses of the funds needed to attend to this disaster.
"To deal more effectively and urgently with the challenges that confront us," he said.
Momentum Franchise Principal & Financial Adviser at Consult Corne Welman said the president declaring the state of disaster would be positive for the economy.
"He said everything I wanted to hear. We had been hearing of long-term solutions and now he has come up with a short-term solution, and we are going to see economic growth.
She said this would stimulate the economy as it would help businesses and citizens.
"It's going to be effective and a drastic step. This means now they (government) can do interventions at a really fast rate," she said
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