The new year is barely sixteen days old, and continued Stage 6 load shedding has us talking about a revolution.
As Tracy Chapman sang in the late 1980s, "It sounds like a whisper, don't you know, they're talking about a revolution". Could this be the year that South Africans rise up against the governing ANC for killing the light?
As we teeter on the edge of Stage 8 power cuts, the opposition is organising a massive march on Luthuli House next week, prominent lawyers have reached the point of gatvolness where they are begging clients to brief them on fighting Eskom in court, and the general mood of the nation is one of palpable anger, frustration and despair.
What has changed in the past few weeks and months that has South Africans baying for Eskom's, and the ANC's, blood?
Besides prolonged periods of Stage 6 load shedding, which effectively means ten hours without power, I think the penny has dropped in a big way that it is none other than the ANC that is to blame for our perilous electricity situation.
With André de Ruyter at the helm, Eskom still had some veneer of respectability, and there was at least a plan to try and fix some of the ageing power stations to run for another decade or two while we roll out renewable energy plants at scale.
But with De Ruyter being hounded out of Eskom by a demagogue who called his efforts to fix the place "treason", and with the demagogue now poised to take over control of Eskom, it is as clear as daylight to all South Africans that the ANC has no clue or desire to fix the situation.
Mark my words: if Eskom is transferred to Gwede Mantashe's energy department, overdue maintenance will be stopped, and our power stations will be run into the ground to reduce load shedding in the run-up to the 2024 general elections.
Those in the know tell me that we could potentially run without load shedding for a few months, but if those power stations then break, the grid will completely collapse.
At that point of Armageddon, we will fully understand the difference between blackouts and load shedding.
It is unbelievable that an ANC who recently elected the so-called "renewal" slate to govern the party for the next five years is about to transfer Eskom to the man who is single-handedly responsible for the fact that we have not procured emergency power or fast-tracked renewable energy rollout over the past five years.
How can President Cyril Ramaphosa, after vividly outlining the country's energy crisis in minute detail during his political review at Nasrec, allow Mantashe to take charge of our electricity future? That would be akin to putting Tony Yengeni in charge of the Hawks.
If Ramaphosa wants to give the ANC any chance of securing over 50% of the vote in the 2024 election, he has to get rid of Mantashe and face the reality that Eskom cannot be fixed.
The best he can do is to manage Eskom like a terminally ill patient in frail care while allowing independent power producers to aggressively build capacity and contracting emergency power suppliers to fill the gaps.
Mantashe has been a wrecking ball in the energy department and rather than being given more authority, should be removed from this portfolio when the president finally reshuffles his "renewal" cabinet.
Just read what the country's foremost energy expert, Professor Anton Eberhard, revealed in the Sunday Times on the weekend and try not to faint:
"In Gwede Mantashe's nearly four years as energy minister, he has not yet delivered a single publicly procured megawatt that is generating electricity for the grid… One of my meetings with Mantashe was in 2019, soon after his portfolio was expanded to include energy, and I warned that his legacy would be 'Mr Load-Shedding' unless he acted with ambition and urgency in procuring new power, enabled by the extraordinary powers granted him in legislation.
"He tucked my briefing note into his jacket pocket and said he would blame Pravin Gordhan when the lights went off. And subsequently, he did exactly that. My encounter was not unique. Others have reported similar experiences."
This is an extraordinary revelation that should immediately halt any efforts to transfer Eskom away from Gordhan's oversight – flawed as the department of public enterprises may be – to Mantashe's portfolio.
If Ramaphosa is politically compromised to act because Mantashe saved his skin with the Phala Phala report, and led the campaign to return him to the ANC presidency, then we are in bigger trouble than we thought, and Ramaphosa should be exposed and pressurised at all levels of society.
If Ramaphosa is the "renewal" man he claims to be, he should take a feather from former president Nelson Mandela's cap, who appointed banker Chris Liebenberg as finance minister in 1994 when he realised there wasn't someone in the ANC to immediately take over at National Treasury and found someone in the private sector who was loyal and competent.
I cannot think of anyone more suited to be entrusted with our energy future than Eberhard, who cut his teeth in the anti-apartheid movement and has been involved in the ANC's energy policy discussions for decades.
The Constitution allows Ramaphosa to appoint two members of his cabinet from outside of Parliament. No member of Parliament from any party is more suited or experienced than Eberhard to take over as minister of energy.
In a time of war, you need your best soldiers in the right positions on the battlefield.
Ramaphosa still has a final chance to be a courageous leader in a very dark time.
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