LETTER: Eskom calamity proves ANC can’t meet needs of citizens
To save his party from dishonour, Rhamphosa should explain how the struggling SOE will be carved up for those who have the skills to run it
27 September 2022 - 17:45
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
Watching the calamity unfold at Eskom has exposed the limitations of the current regime to be able to juggle the demands of its citizens and those “state capture” entrepreneurs who in effect underwrite the party and its lavish lifestyle. The challenge for our current president is not to try to remain significant, but rather to avoid being labelled a “Zuma lite” — an empty suit with a disposition of a disproportionate lifestyle. The mandarins at Luthuli House should heed JF Kennedy’s famous idiom:"Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”.
What Ramaphosa should expound is not more rhetoric — he has abused every opportunity he had to be taken for his word — but how Eskom will be carved up for those who have the skills and capital to run the utility to sustain the reasonable growth rate South Africans so desperately require. The sooner he does this the sooner he saves his own party from dishonour.
US economist John Galbraith said it best:“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
John Catsicas Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Eskom calamity proves ANC can’t meet needs of citizens
To save his party from dishonour, Rhamphosa should explain how the struggling SOE will be carved up for those who have the skills to run it
Watching the calamity unfold at Eskom has exposed the limitations of the current regime to be able to juggle the demands of its citizens and those “state capture” entrepreneurs who in effect underwrite the party and its lavish lifestyle. The challenge for our current president is not to try to remain significant, but rather to avoid being labelled a “Zuma lite” — an empty suit with a disposition of a disproportionate lifestyle. The mandarins at Luthuli House should heed JF Kennedy’s famous idiom: "Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”.
What Ramaphosa should expound is not more rhetoric — he has abused every opportunity he had to be taken for his word — but how Eskom will be carved up for those who have the skills and capital to run the utility to sustain the reasonable growth rate South Africans so desperately require. The sooner he does this the sooner he saves his own party from dishonour.
US economist John Galbraith said it best: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
John Catsicas
Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
DUMA GQUBULE: Ramaphosa feels the heat of angry South Africans
Eskom board members told there is a shake-up ahead
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Most Read
Published by Arena Holdings and distributed with the Financial Mail on the last Thursday of every month except December and January.