6 MONTHS OF “NO ACCOUNTABILITY” FOR SA’s ELECTRICITY MINISTER Another 52 weeks of load-shedding - Samantha Graham-Mare

South Africa’s ever-optimistic Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has had “no accountability” for six months. That has emerged from a BizNews interview with the Democratic Alliance's (DA’s) Shadow Minister of Electricity, Samantha Graham-Mare. She shares the details of her many failed attempts to engage the Minister to collaborate on solving the country’s power-supply crisis. She charges that he has failed to attend any of the ad hoc Energy meetings in the Western Cape, “despite having three times agreed to be there and then not pitching for them”. However, with Parliament having decided that the Minister now reports to the Department of Public Enterprises, she is hopeful that there will be opportunities to engage with him in the Portfolio Committee. Meanwhile, the Minister’s predictions ”change weekly” in terms of when the crisis will be resolved. “But if we actually had to have a look at ESKOM's outlook for the next 52 weeks, you will see that every single week is indicated in red, which means that there will be load shedding - according to ESKOM- for every single week of the next 52 weeks,” she warns.