By Neelam Rahim

Civil society calls on President Cyril Ramaphosa to act on the energy crisis. They call on Department of Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to urgently take a simple step required to allow additional renewable electricity capacity to be built and alleviate the energy crisis, which has been met with silence.

Speaking to Radio Islam International is the Strategic Lead at the Green Connection, Liz McDaid

According to Liz, it was around the 6th or 7th of July that the 16 organisations issued the call to Masntashe with no response. 

She says that a physical letter was even taken into the department and has still not received an acknowledgement, never mind a polite response that one would expect from the Civil servants and politicians who are here to serve the people of South Africa. 

Liz tells Radio Islam the steps they require the Minister to take, which would allow the additional renewal of electricity capacity. 

According to Liz, renewables are quick and easy from an energy perspective. Between one or two years, you could have new generation capacity on the grid. 

She says we have an IRP [Integrated Resource Plan] electricity plan and that there is a piece of paper called section 34 determination, which is where the Minister simply say all the renewable energy that we have in that plan up to 2030, let’s just get it going now, which we believe would kick-start a lot of things and put us on the road to ending load shedding as we need more generation on the grid so that the Eskom power stations, which have been completely running to the ground, can be taken offline to be fixed. 

Liz further mentions that since the Minister has not responded, they have now written to the Minister’s boss, the President, urging him to tell the Minister to do the right thing.

“We are hopeful to receiver a response as when we have written to the president in previous times, and we have received acknowledgement and the promise that something would happen even if the promise did not necessarily materialise,” she said.