South Africa’s former President Mr. Jacob Zuma, whose administration has been blamed for the power outages his country is experiencing, has said the power crisis could have been averted if only the country had built nuclear reactors. In an interview with Business Day on Friday, Zuma said the costly nuclear build programme he supported during his presidency could have “solved our problems, once and for all”. Zuma, who resigned as president in mid-February 2018, said the Russians would have been the most trustworthy country to carry out the project, because of their support in the struggle against apartheid. Proposals to build a second nuclear power station, with an estimated cost to the economy of around R1trn, were criticised as unaffordable during Zuma’s term. The DA Public Enterprises spokesperson, Natasha Mazzone, said on Friday that a nuclear build would be an “impossibility” given the current state of the economy. “Our country is in a much worse economic position that we were a few years ago, we simply cannot afford nuclear. Instead, we need to diversify our energy mix by bringing renewable energy to the grid,” said Mazzone. Zuma’s spokesperson Vukile Mathabela did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Friday. ‘If we went for nuclear’ The president, however, told Business Day he is convinced nuclear is the right way to go. “We are going to pay trillions of rand because of the problems of energy….but if we went for nuclear, we will be out of spending trillions for a shorter amount of time and we’ll make more trillions,” he told the newspaper. South Africans has been experiencing rolling blackouts for the past week as Eskom grapples with a shortage of available capacity. According to Eskom, the shortages have been caused by a lack of diesel supplies, scheduled and unscheduled outages at generation units, and the devastating effect of a cyclone that hit Mozambique on transmission lines. “The fact of the matter is nuclear could solve our problems, once and for all.” “Now we are in deep [trouble], we are therefore increasing the debt of the country with no hope to bring it down. That is the problem,” said Zuma. A High Court in 2017 halted the country’s nuclear ambition, ruling that the procurement processes was unlawful, following an application by environmental activists. The court quashed the government’s attempts to secure 9.6 GW of nuclear power, including the initial determination to procure nuclear energy in 2013, the cooperation agreements signed with Russia, the US and South Korea, as well as former energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson’s decision to hand over the procurement of nuclear energy to Eskom in 2016. “Russia carried the biggest load in supporting us. So we cannot, when we are now free, forget about people who were our friends at the time of need,” Zuma told Business Day. While nuclear still forms part of SA’s energy mix, there are currently no plans to move forward with procuring new nuclear-powered reactors. In July 2018, at a BRICS meeting in Johannesburg, President Cyril Ramaphosa told Russian President Vladimir Putin that South Africa could not afford new nuclear reactors.

South Africa’s current energy supply challenges are as a result of aging power plants and maintenance that has been deteriorating due to a lack of maintenance expenditure. Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan made this bold statement during an Eskom briefing conducted alongside Eskom’s board chairman Jabu Mabuza as well as Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe on Tuesday. For weeks now South Africans have been experiencing rolling blackouts, which the power utility blames on shortage of capacity among other given reasons. Read more: POWER ALERT: Eskom continues with loadshedding Gordhan said: “This is a difficult time. Many people are frustrated because of the uncertainty around what is happening. We fully understand the frustration.” He added: “We apologise for the burden that we are placing on South Africans at this point in time; [also] to the businesses – small and big – that are working under difficult circumstances in the current economic climate.” Responding to questions of how long loadshedding will last, Gordhan said, “At this point in time, we are still trying to get a better grasp of the technical problems and other problems that the power stations are confronting. “That is why there’s the Eskom presidential task team that was created in January. Eskom board and management are developing a turnaround strategy and a nine-point operational plan,” he said. Meanwhile, Mabuza underlined that Eskom’s problems are financial, structural and operational. “We have tried to do what we call a clean-up. What is clear now is that there is money stolen. This is clear,” he stated. However, the bad news he said is that it is “clear looking at the financials that there has been no maintenance. The expenditure on maintenance was getting less and less until 2018. The question is how was money being spent? That is a matter for law enforcement”. Prioritising maintenance According to Hadebe, the power utility will invest R50 billion in maintenance of power stations, over the next five years. “Over the next five years, R50 billion has been set aside. That will not only be dealing with generation because that’s what we’ve been concentrating on, but we’ve taken a decision that if we don’t deal with transmission and distribution, we’ll be facing the same challenges we are with generation. “Going forward, we are to make sure that distribution and transmission are maintained,” Hadebe concluded.