South Africa is sinking into an energy crisis, particularly electricity. Bad times for Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president who can no longer contain popular anger in the face of cruel shortages in electricity and a breathless economy which brings to light all the shortcomings of the State and its inability to manage problems. .
After one of the darkest years in 2022 for the country, marked by more than 200 days of load shedding, power cuts continue in 2023 to do damage.
South Africans are deprived of electricity for more than 10 hours a day because of this scandal which fragile Cyril Ramaphosa following years of mismanagement, corruption, sabotage and inadequate political decisions.
Eskom, the public electricity company, has come to terms with the facts, announcing that they have become unable to produce electricity on a continuous basis.
South Africans have mobilized and violent protests have erupted in several townships and the opposition says the ruling ANC party is the source of the problem.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) called on all South Africans to voice their anger over the ANC’s destruction of their energy infrastructure and economy.
Civil society organizations are also very angry with the Head of State and have multiplied demonstrations, including that of January 20 in Pretoria and February 2 in Midrand in front of Eskom’s premises.
Faced with the crisis situation, Cyril Ramaphosa had called on Eskom not to apply the price increase, to put the blame on the company and play the card of the president of the people while the anger is directed against him and his mismanagement.
He canceled his trip to the 53rd Davos summit to reflect the image of a president close to the people who is interested in the problems of citizens, but in reality, it is above all to contain social discontent and fear of a coup. of State in his absence from the country which prevented him from traveling, because this is not the first time that South Africa has experienced an electricity crisis. In 2019, Ramaphosa had already cut short a trip to Egypt for the same reasons.
For the opposition and the South Africans who are fed up, President Cyril Ramaphosa has shown his inability to solve the country’s problems. All strategies have already been used and more than once, travel cancellations, major meetings with officials, speeches to the Nation, major sectoral strategies that do not succeed.
Ramaphosa shot down his last card last Thursday, giving an annual state of the nation address and announcing the imposition of a state of national disaster, effective immediately.
It is the same emergency measure used for the coronavirus pandemic, and it allows him “to accelerate energy supply projects and limit regulatory constraints”, according to him. In reality, he will have control over all energy projects and will pass all even unpopular decisions to get out of trouble.
This is the case of the projects of TotalEnergies, which has requested a production license for two gas blocks off the coast of the country which could bring in more than a billion barrels, and which should be used to diversify energy sources. in South Africa, Africa’s biggest polluter, which uses coal for its electricity.
Social discontent against this new gas project in a country already very polluted, was quick to be heard in South Africa and elsewhere among environmental activists because the project located in the south of the country is a whale migration area and threatens the great marine biodiversity and the families of fishermen who have lived for several generations from fishing.
Ramaphosa is announced in Algeria, the African ally against the territorial integrity of Morocco. This trip should, according to observers, be synonymous with generous financial aid, to which could also be added an extension if the South African president agrees to take a short trip to Tindouf, just to give legitimacy, even fictitious, to an increasingly isolated puppet entity on the continent.