Thank you Deputy Speaker, it is not easy being the tallest member of this House. We just heard from the ANC that when the bailout money runs out;
prescribed assets are coming in. That was just confirmed to us and that should give us all possible thoughts.
What is more important is that Eskom has a gun to the head of this government as we have just heard because they are ready to pull the trigger on a sovereign debt crisis at any time if National Treasury does not do their bidding. This is a fact.
Every citizen in our country is a hostage to Eskom. We are hostage to load shedding which causes massive economic damage. We are hostage to these bailout demands and to the endless management crisis. Eskom is not even capable of holding on to its chief operating officer, CEO. We now have a point where the board chairs the Acting CEO. We got an entity riddled with corporate governance problems; whose board's chairperson is meant to hold its corporate governance to account, but is actually in charge of it. That is not how you manage an entity this big.
There are days when I ask myself if Eskom is physically burning money and not diesel to keep the lights on.
Losses at Eskom have accelerated from R2,3 billion last year to R21 billion this year, while at the same time, Eskom's outstanding municipal debt from municipalities has accelerated from R2,3 billion to R20 billion.
Most of the debts from municipalities emanates from the Free State - the gangster state of Ace Magashule. It is interesting to note that the parliamentary programme had originally planned to pass this particular Bill with the adjustment budget in December but our hostage takers at Eskom demanded their money at the end of this month. This means that there were many joint meetings with the NCOP committee on this Bill and it was fast- tracked to today; and in this context, one wonders if load shedding was not as a result of hostage takers ensuring that they get their money on time. [Applause.]
In this present form; this one-page Bill will hand R59 billion in ransom money to Eskom over the next two years. In addition to R23 billion a year already allocated to Eskom over the next 10 years; blowing up the deficit and debt in this constrained fiscal environment. I call it ransom because it is unconditional.
The Bill allows the Finance Minister to transfer the money to Eskom without any preconditions being met. He can impose his conditions after giving them the money. If I gave you a loan for a house and you spend it on the car, no bank would allow that, but National Treasury does.
The DA offered several amendments to this Bill, including saying that no executives at Eskom should get bonuses. People are tired of seeing their schools, hospitals and clinics scramble while state-owned enterprises, SOEs, consume resources meant for the poor and reward their management with bonuses.
Another DA amendment that was rejected was that Eskom review all its procurement contracts to eliminate cost inflation as a result of dodgy deals under the ANC administration, I may say. Eskom coal price contracts show that some companies charge double what others do for coal. The cost inflation is estimated to be R10 billion a year. You begin to see how these Eskom losses stark up.
The amendments that the DA proposed were rejected because they are supposedly contained in Eskom's nine-point plan, but Eskom has had so many turnaround plans that they are back to where they started. Simply put, instead of using the full might of the law in this Bill to force the management of Eskom to do the right thing, this Parliament wants to trust the same people who lost R21 billion last year and cannot keep the lights on to adhere to yet another turnaround plan.
The management of Eskom is so poor that at the start of this month, 1 October, Fitch downgraded Eskom's stand- alone credit rating to junk. The Bill in its present form is a blank cheque and more of the same. It rewards the culture of state capture and theft. It diminishes the importance of oversight and accountability for public money. It allows Eskom to continue to hold the gun to the heads of our citizens, businesses and our government.
The only way out of this mess is to follow the very sensible proposals that the National Treasury's Economic Strategy Document proposes as well as diversifying a generation capacity away from coal and finally
privatising generation capacity. Without this, we will be bailing out Eskom for another 100 years, and I don't think the South African public deserves this as all of its resources that should be used on the poor are drained on Eskom. Thank you. [Applause.]