Cape Town - Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has shared that while he understood the rationale of the ruling by the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, on critical services being spared from load shedding, he believes the practicality of this was impossible.
Winde made his impassioned comments on Tuesday, following the High Court judgment which was delivered last week.
The widely celebrated judgment, which would have secured uninterrupted electricity supply for all public healthcare facilities, schools and police stations has been criticised by government and energy analysts for its nearly impossible implementation.
The overwhelming sentiment was that even if the government and Eskom were able to adhere to the ruling, the risk of a national blackout would become severely higher and come at a staggering cost to Eskom and the National Treasury.
The court application was brought by 19 unions and political parties – including ActionSA, the UDM, IFP and the National Union of Metalworkers in South Africa (Numsa) – seeking to declare load shedding unconstitutional and to reduce its detrimental impact on certain critical sectors by exempting these from load shedding.
The judgment ruled that where it was not possible to isolate and exempt facilities embedded in their surrounding networks, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan must ensure these facilities get generators and other alternate energy supplies to ensure uninterrupted electricity.
Premier Winde said that for the court’s ruling to be feasible, provinces would need to build dedicated feeders for schools, police stations, and hospitals which would be expensive, or would mean municipalities would have to take the networks out of the schedules and increase load shedding for the remaining areas.
“Providing these installations with standby generators would also be very expensive and I’m not sure who is expected to pay for this, given that these installations are in both Eskom and municipal-supplied areas.
“The Western Cape government (WCG), however, wholeheartedly agrees with the court that power blackouts impact prejudicially on the constitutional rights of all South Africans.
“The WCG is already taking steps to protect key service delivery in the areas of healthcare and education,” Winde said.
According to the WCG, the provincial Health and Wellness Department is working to install hybrid inverters in every rural primary healthcare facility over two phases and solar panels at 15 hospitals until March 2024.
The Western Cape Department of Education will spend R40 million this year to promote energy efficiency at its schools. This includes the installation of LED lighting at 50 schools so far, which helps cut electricity costs.
The department is also undertaking to install solar PV systems at 10 schools, generating up to 60 kilowatts peak depending on the size of the school and installation.
More than R88m in emergency funding was also released for the purchase of generators which will be distributed across numerous municipalities in the province, to support vital municipal infrastructure and services, said the provincial government.
“Our initiatives to protect the delivery of critical services to communities despite chronic blackouts, demonstrate the provincial government’s deep commitment to citizens.
“Eskom itself pointed out the dire situation with their operations, setting out in great detail the disastrous political decisions responsible for our present situation,” Winde said.
In a letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa sent in January, Winde detailed the devastating effects that electricity disruptions were having on various aspects of our citizens’ lives and the economy.
In the letter, he stated that while the Western Cape had taken steps to support municipalities in sourcing diesel generators to maintain operations at critical infrastructure points, the solution was not a sustainable alternative due to exorbitant capital, running and maintenance costs.
“In short, basic service delivery in this province, as I am sure in other provinces as well, is under severe threat,” Winde said.
“The question remains, who will pay for the massive expansion of grid capacity and emergency measures desperately needed to ensure critical services are safeguarded from load shedding? The cost implications are significant.
“Funds should be coming from the national government to provinces and municipalities to support this investment,” he said.
“Not forgetting that Eskom also conceded in their submissions to the court that rolling blackouts cause human suffering and have a detrimental impact on citizens’ fundamental human rights.”
Winde said this stood out in stark contrast to Ramaphosa’s submission to the court that “none of the government respondents has a constitutional responsibility to supply electricity to the people of the republic”.
“This displays a shocking lack of understanding that a reliable supply of electricity underpins almost every fundamental right enshrined in our Constitution as has already been confirmed by the Constitutional Court, even though it is not itself described as a fundamental right in our Constitution,” Winde said.