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South Africa's plan to expand its power grid, now the biggest bottleneck to replacing coal with renewables, has hit a snag: finding investors to lend the necessary $21-billion to a near-bankrupt state monopoly.

Since May's election brought a coalition government to power, there has been a policy shift favouring renewables, after years of bureaucratic delays and contradictory messages about South Africa's willingness to give up coal, which provides 80% of its power.

But as private providers - including Mainstream Renewable (owned by Aker Horizons), EDF Renewables and Acciona SA - prepare to transform the sector, many face another problem: how to get power from sunny and windy outposts to energy-hungry urban centres.

Six officials told Reuters over the past month they were considering options for financing some 14 000 kilometers of power lines and pylons, but hadn't yet found a solution.

"Our quest to decarbonise ... relies heavily on our ability to expand the grid," new Energy Minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa told Reuters at his office in Pretoria late last month.

"But raising R390-billion, the State doesn't have the balance sheet to roll out that size of capital investment."

Meanwhile, donors offering a total of $11.6-billion mostly in loans to fund climate-related projects are reluctant to lend the needed cash to State power firm Eskom without sovereign guarantees, which the government cannot currently provide, two donor country sources and a South African source involved in the programme, told Reuters.

That is because of its high debt levels - Eskom owes over R400-billion, even after receiving billions in government debt relief. Broke municipalities also owe the utility R78-billion, which Ramokgopa calls an "existential threat".

Representatives of the German and French partners in the donor-funded programme did not respond to emailed questions, while British partners declined to officially comment.

"SIMPLY NO WAY"

Burning coal has rendered South Africa among the world's top 15 greenhouse gas emitters - above Italy, France and Britain. It is seen as a test case for aid to developing countries to switch to green energy, alongside Vietnam and Indonesia.

But years of blackouts from ageing power stations have also ravaged Africa's most industrialised economy, and Eskom only ended them earlier this year by firing up its coal burners to full capacity, most likely increasing emissions.

A bidding process to bring in independent producers to generate power and sell it to Eskom last year failed owing to insufficient grid capacity, Rudi Dicks, head of project management at President Cyril Ramaphosa's office, said.

The core issue is that the grid stems from the northeastern coal belt, but the sun beats down hardest on the semi-desert Northern Cape, while coastal Eastern Cape gets the best winds.

"You really need to reconfigure the entire grid ... (but) they are chugging along building at less than 10% the pace that's needed," Crispian Oliver, head of the Presidential Climate Commission, told Reuters.

Eskom's plan involves building 1 400 kilometres of transmission lines every year for at least 10 years. Last year, it managed 74 km.

"There's simply no way Treasury can put out (sufficient) ... guarantees," Oliver told Reuters, remarks echoed by Ramokgopa.

"The alternative is to ... get the private sector to take on large portions of the risk," Oliver said, via mezzanine finance.

"WE NEED TO BUILD NOW"

A Treasury spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but the two donor sources said options included escrow accounts - in which a neutral third party holds the funds and releases them when both sides have met their obligations - and offtake agreements with private firms that would fund construction in exchange for future earnings.

The latter could unlock cash from the United States, which currently doesn't fund transmission as it will not work with public institutions.

"Should a framework involving private entities be established,...

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) wants Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie to focus on dismantling systemic barriers that it says prevent the majority of citizens from accessing and excelling in sports.

The EFF congratulated the 149 athletes who represented South Africa at the 2024 Paris Olympics. A total of six medals were won.

The party also congratulated Kenya for its "remarkable performance" in securing 11 medals.

The party noted that while it celebrates Team SA victories, harsh realities continue to plague South African sports.

It said the lack of transformation across many sporting codes was a stark reminder of the African National Congress (ANC) government's "failure to undo the systemic inequalities".

The EFF highlighted that 30 years after the oppressive apartheid government denied Africans equal rights, the race demographics of Team SA do not reflect the country's diversity.

"This highlights the fact that access to sports, like so many other areas of our society, is still largely determined by race and class," it said.

The party claimed that government had failed to dismantle what it called the entrenched barriers that it believed prevented the majority of the country's people from participating in and excelling in sports.

It also noted that the Sports, Arts and Culture Ministry had failed to focus on the fundamental barriers that it said existed for black children to achieve sporting excellence.

"Instead of eradicating these barriers, the department is a corrupt entity for the politically connected and infamous for issuing condolences," the EFF said.

It warned that the continuous economic marginalisation of black and African people in particular, meant that the majority of South Africans were excluded from sports that required expensive training and equipment.

It stated that this exclusion was not just a reflection of economic inequality but also a deliberate perpetuation of racial exclusion in sports.

The EFF also said that while it appreciated that sports sanctions can be a tool for addressing oppressive regimes, it believed that excluding Russia from participating in the 2024 Olympics was weaponised "to take a vindictive stance against Russia for defending itself against Ukraine".

"This was particularly hypocritical given that apartheid Israel was not sanctioned while continuing to commit acts of genocide against Palestinian people. This selective application of sanctions reveals the underlying bias and the use of sports as a political tool by imperialist forces, which the EFF strongly condemns," it said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday that with South Africa's high unemployment rate, entrepreneurship is an important tool to empower more women and broaden their participation in the economy.

Ramaphosa wrote in his weekly letter to the nation that this included the informal sector, which accounted for 18% of total employment in the country.

He said 30 years into the country's democracy there was still more to do to broaden women's economic participation.

Ramaphosa said empowering women contributed to thriving economies, spurred productivity and boosts economic growth, and added that with greater collaboration between government, business, and with the support of labour and civil society, government could use entrepreneurship to lift more women out of poverty and secure their financial freedom.

"The achievement of economic freedom for South Africa's women would be the most fitting tribute to the courageous women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956," he said.

Last week, South Africa commemorated the August 9, 1956 Women's March to the Union Buildings.

Ramaphosa said government was also striving to expand women's access to economic activity through land ownership, enable female farmers to own land through the State's land redistribution programme and support them with equipment and other agricultural inputs.

"From citrus farmers in North West to cooperatives making affordable school furniture in KwaZulu-Natal, to cosmetics companies and tech startups in the Western Cape, all across the country women-owned enterprises are benefiting from an integrated approach to supporting small businesses," he explained.

He highlighted that the private sector was also playing an important role in guiding these entrepreneurship journeys through startup incubators, women entrepreneurship awards and programmes such as the Youth Employment Service.

He added that with the help of the Social Employment Fund and others, government was enabling women entrepreneurs to employ workers and provide mentorship to trainees.

"There is much more that the private sector can do. Access to financial resources, including credit lines, is vital to the viability of women-owned businesses. Another important area is access to tools of financial inclusion like bank accounts and mobile money and payment technologies. It will be critical to broaden the reach of financial services to include women in the informal sector and in rural areas," he highlighted.

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES

Ramaphosa explained that through its various departments and entities, the State provided financial support to women to enable them to start their own businesses and to sustain existing businesses.

Women-owned businesses were also able to access training in business and project management, IT and other skills, he said.

He highlighted that government had set a target to allocate at least 40% of public procurement spend to women-owned businesses.

In 2021, government launched a Women's Economic Assembly to enable women-owned enterprises to participate in local industry value chains.

Since its inception, he said this programme had yielded promising results in a number of key economic sectors, notably the automotive sector.

ActionSA wants a comprehensive citizenship audit in South Africa following the Department of Home Affairs' (DHA's) announcement that it has established prima facie evidence of fraud committed by Miss South Africa contestant Chidimma Adetshina's mother.

On Wednesday the Department of Home Affairs said it has uncovered that Adetshina's mother might have committed identity theft, as it delved into the Miss South Africa contestant's citizenship status following public outcry.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber pointed out that a South African had her identity stolen as part of the alleged fraud committed by Adetshina's mother.

"Yet again, in a tale all too familiar to South Africans, this incident is but one more in a long list of abuses, corruption and criminal circumvention of our immigration laws stretching over decades, which we believe has not only shattered the integrity of our immigration system but also dangerously compromised South Africa's national security," said ActionSA Parliamentary chief whip Lerato Ngobeni.

She said ActionSA would actively monitor the progress of the investigation, urging the DHA to demonstrate its intolerance of corruption, fraud and violations of the country's immigration laws.

ActionSA noted that a 2022 review conducted by the Ministerial Committee on the Issuance of Permits and Visas revealed that 36 647 fraudulent permit and visa applications were detected, 12 177 of which were from Nigerian nationals alone.

"Widespread corruption, DHA's structural deficiencies, lax controls, porous borders, and ultimately failing law enforcement have left South Africa's immigration system vulnerable to an onslaught of abuses," Ngobeni said.

She stated that ActionSA believed this crisis demanded a thorough audit of all issuances of South African residency and citizenship "to put an end once and for all to the rot that has compromised the country's immigration regime".

The African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) has resolved that the party will return any VBS Mutual Bank monies proven to have been amassed, unknowingly, from the destruction of VBS.

ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula addressed the media on Thursday, on the outcomes of the recently concluded ANC NEC meeting and the party's lekgotla, where he noted that the NEC reaffirmed its position that all those implicated for wrongdoing in the VBS matter must be subjected to the full course of the law.

Last month, former VBS board chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi revealed that the Economic Freedom Fighters received monthly donations and a so-called business loan of millions of rands from VBS, since 2017, through a front company, Sgameka Projects.

He alleged that R5-million was originally paid, followed by monthly donations of R1-million and a R4-million loan.

He also claimed that in 2016, ANC treasurer-general at the time Zweli Mkhize had requested R2-million from the bank to pay an ANC supplier.

Matodzi was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to 33 charges relating to the VBS Mutual Bank heist.

The ANC NEC reaffirmed its stance on processing without delays all allegations of impropriety through the National Disciplinary Committee, particularly those arising from the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State.

TRANSFORMATION AGENDA

Mbalula acknowledged that the ANC did not receive a decisive majority in the May national and provincial election results, and said the party must focus on defending and advancing the agenda of progressive social transformation.

"In diagnosing the moment, the ANC NEC agrees that the national fault-lines of unemployment, inequality and poverty have persisted despite progress over the past 30 years, with serious negative impacts on all segments of the motive forces," he explained.

The ANC NEC resolved to use the Government of National Unity (GNU) to "shed signs of complacency" and arrogance and be "totally intolerant of corruption and incompetence".

Mbalula pointed out that the ANC seized the tactical and strategic initiative and shaped a common understanding about the need for political parties to work together under the GNU and to voluntarily cooperate in setting up an inclusive, viable and stable government that would address people's needs and advance the transformation agenda.

Following the African National Congress (ANC) being granted leave to appeal the High Court judgment, which dismissed its copyright infringement case against the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), the MKP has expressed confidence that an appeal will uphold the court's decision in its favour.

In April, the Durban High Court dismissed the ANC's case, which challenged the MKP's use of the name uMkhonto weSizwe and its logo.

Last week, the ANC argued during an application for leave to appeal against the ruling that it had a reasonable prospect of a different outcome on appeal and believed it deserved an order barring former President Jacob Zuma's MKP from using its registered name and logo.

"This presents yet another teachable moment for the sell-out ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa about the ground breaking formation of our party, the home of the landless masses. Until the outcome of the upcoming appeal, nothing will change," the MKP said.

It is confident that another victory is certain at the Supreme Court of Appeal.

The party said with the ANC's coalition with the Democratic Alliance, which it called the Moonshot coalition, the ANC has lost any right it may have had to the heritage of the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle and history.

"…by joining the Moonshot Pact, the ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa has obliterated into dustbin of non-relevance and has firmly defined itself among the enemines of the African people," the MKP said.

Meanwhile, while briefing the media on the outcomes of the recently concluded National Executive Committee meeting and the National Lekgotla, ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula vowed that his party will fight the case.

"What will we say to future generations? That we allowed one former President to just steal? We will chase this thing [case] up until the apex court, we will, there will be no retreat on that. Rest assured because that rightfully belongs to the ANC," he said.

"I might be over simplifying it, but they [MKP] have taken uMkhonto weSizwe, our symbols… and we can't allow that," Mbalula said.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has condemned what it termed the "disgraceful misuse of public funds" on Cyril Ramaphosa's Presidential imbizo events, adding that it sets a "dangerous precedent" for other government ministries and institutions in the Government of National Unity to follow suit.

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa pointed out that Ramaphosa's Presidential imbizos cost taxpayers a substantial R44-million for four events, over 18 months.

The events were held with the aim of addressing public service delivery concerns and to provide a platform for citizens to voice their complaints and suggestions.

The EFF said the events were a blatant squandering of taxpayer money and a "gross injustice" to South Africans.

The party said the ethically questionable expense is compounded by Ramaphosa's "evident disinterest and lack of political will" to address the critical issues facing the country.

The EFF added that despite these events, Ramaphosa had shown no "intention of following through on concerns raised by the people", saying this highlights a disconnect between the administration and the citizens the imbizo claims to serve.

The EFF also condemned the "outrageously inflated costs" of the marquees and other expenses being used to host the Imbizo events, noting that this was evidence of financial malfeasance.

The party said it would continue to hold the "corrupt administration" accountable and fight for the rightful allocation of public funds towards meaningful development and service delivery.

The EFF in Parliament, meanwhile, decried severe budget cuts across all ministries and portfolios, highlighting that these "reckless reductions" have no clear strategy for addressing pressing issues or improving the economy.

It alleged that this "chaotic mismanagement" was yet further testament to the African National Congress's "incompetence and corruption."

Civil rights movement Not In My Name has called on Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka to investigate the R44-million spent on the Presidentialimbizos, also citing misuse of funds and improper procurement processes.

George municipality Councillor Christo Alexander has moved from the Patriotic Alliance (PA) to the Democratic Alliance (DA), a move that the DA said was "no surprise.

The DA said PA councillors are realising that their party is "all talk and no action."

"The DA believes that the reason for this migration is that the PA is a deceitful party that lacks accountability, willingness to serve residents and that prioritises their needs over the needs of the people," the DA pointed out.

The party claimed that PA deceit includes leader Gayton McKenzie "snatching away" bicycles that he donated to children in Beaufort West and "ostensibly holding onto the R3-million raised at a luxury gala dinner that was meant to improve service delivery".

The money is still reportedly missing, the DA said.

The party also noted the immigration of PA Councillors in Beaufort West ahead of the by-elections in June.

Amid criticism that the Presidency had spent R44-million of taxpayer money on an 18-month series of Presidential izimbizo, Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said on Wednesday it was "mischievous to reduce" the engagement events "to rands and cents".

Magwenya was addressing the media where he insisted that the izimbizo were not an extravagant exercise or wasteful expenditure of taxpayers' money.

"…but it is a caring government which is engaging its citizens across the political divide. It is about a caring government that is closer to the people, ensuring their right to access to basic services is solidified," he said.

The Presidency was responding to criticism it received over the cost of the four events, over 18 months.

The Economic Freedom Fighters condemned what it termed the "disgraceful misuse of public funds" on the Presidential imbizo events, adding that it set a "dangerous precedent" for other government ministries and institutions in the Government of National Unity (GNU) to follow suit.

Civil rights movement Not In My Name has called on the Public Protector to investigate the R44-million spent on the Presidential imbizos, also citing misuse of funds and improper procurement processes.

Magwenya noted that the events had become a priority of the seventh administration, as the President identified local government as a priority focus area of the current GNU.

The Presidential izimbizo programme, through the District Development Model (DDM), was introduced in 2019 where the President signalled his intention to visit all 44 district municipalities and eight metros.

Its aim, he said was to institutionalise integrated planning and delivery in the district and metropolitan sites. The programme was based on the principle of the One-Plan where challenges were identified and addressed in an integrated manner.

"Yes, critics will point out the high cost of DDMs and they will motivate how the money could have been utilised elsewhere. Indeed, one cannot quantify the impact of the Presidential izimbizo in monetary terms, but it should be measured over the medium to long-term of what changes such events will bring to communities," Magwenya averred.

He pointed out that government had an obligation to interact and communicate with citizens across the country, saying with the GNU this had become more urgent so that all citizens could understand how the new administration was working for them.

"Unfortunately, it will be costly at times, however, all the officials involved must ensure that procurement processes [for the events] are conducted within the prescripts of the Public Finance Management Act as outlined," he said.

Magwenya noted that where there were violations of the law, those must be fully investigated and the perpetrators must be duly punished, explaining that the current administration would continue to engage citizens through the Presidential imbizo.

He said the second round of the Presidential izimbizo would start later this month at the Tsakane Stadium in the Ekurhuleni metro and many more would follow over the next five years.

SUCCESS OF PRESIDENTIAL IMBIZO

Magwenya highlighted that the programme did not only focus on the challenges but on medium- to long-term planning to promote inclusive development in conjunction with other stakeholders in the district.

Magwenya said there had been notable success through interventions inspired by the Presidential imbizo, noting the Sedibeng district in Gauteng, where the imbizo contributed to a clinic becoming fully operational.

"The clinic, which was built before the Covid-19 lockdown, had become a white elephant and the community in Zone 17, Sebokeng, had to travel distances for basic medical care," he said.

Through the Presidential imbizo in October 2022, an inter-governmental task team comprising national, provincial, local government and Eskom, identified the gaps for the clinic to become operational, he added.

"The izimbizo is more than just a feel-good gig for the Pr...

Portfolio Committee on Police chairperson Ian Cameron highlighted on Tuesday that resilience building and general support care should be a central pillar of the work of the South African Police Service (Saps) to ensure the mental wellbeing of officers who are expected to fight crime effectively.

The committee expressed shock at the passing of Saps Anti-Gang Unit member Sergeant Raoul Murray, who took his own life last week, pointing out that his suicide highlighted the need for enhanced employee health and wellness initiatives within the Saps.

Cameron said wellness initiatives would assist officers in coping more effectively with the challenges in their operational environment.

"In the context of the high crime rate, especially violent crimes, Saps members are faced with gruesome scenes that are bound to have a negative impact on their mental health," he emphasised.

Cameron noted that with high crime statistics, it was a moral requirement that officers were broadly capacitated to effectively deal with crime.

He highlighted that without the adequate psycho-social support, police would be exposed to unmitigated mental stress that could lead to suicide, saying this must be urgently addressed.

The committee was informed by the Saps management that 33 suicides occurred within the police in the 2019/20 financial year, 30 in the 2020/21 financial year and 39 in the 2021/22 financial year.

Furthermore, 38 homicide-suicide incidents occurred from 2019 to 2022.

The committee emphasised during the 2024/25 budget process that the "continued disregard of this important element" had a direct impact on the morale and effectiveness of Saps members and their ability to fight crime.

Cameron noted that Murray's death came directly after the Portfolio Committee on Police emphasised its concerns about the lack of adequate employee health and wellness interventions for Saps members.

The committee was briefed by the Saps senior management that the entire police structure has only 621 employed health and wellness employees, servicing about 187 278 personnel.

While the chairperson acknowledged that the Saps had partnerships with non-governmental organisations, faith-based organisations and health professionals linked to POLMED and GEMS medical aid schemes, the committee urged Saps management to consider strengthening internal employee health and wellness programmes to ensure that the wellbeing of members was prioritised.