What do we say? [Laughter.] Chair, I do not want to keep you here much longer. I want to thank every member here for the incredibly robust debate and for some of the very, very pertinent points that people have made. Some of it has been touched with a remarkable passion about the future of our country.
To listen to someone like the hon Mangena is to listen to the soft rain falling and the blessing of a man who understands and has the wisdom to understand what is required for this country to go forward. I want to thank you, hon Mangena, for that wisdom that you have shared with us. [Applause.]
I think it is time, and I said this earlier on, that this country engaged in a debate about energy. As I listened to some of this debate, I do believe it is necessary for this portfolio committee to really get to grips with what Eskom is really and truly about. The unfortunate context in which we are operating at the moment is that Eskom has become the person, the institution that everybody loves to bash.
If there is a problem, it is Eskom's fault. If this is happening, it is Eskom. If you had listened to the hon Van Dyk, nothing Eskom could do was right. The Medupi power station is regarded as one of the biggest building projects in the southern hemisphere. It is regarded as one of the most ambitious projects. The concentrated solar power project and the wind power project that Eskom is going to embark on are, as we have heard, the most ambitious projects yet in the world around concentrated solar power.
And yet, we can sit here and just bash, bash, bash, and make sweeping generalisations and great, great inferences that are not based in reality: the board is incompetent, the management cannot do their work, and the workers are on strike half the time. Surely, that is not the way that we engage in oversight. Oversight requires that we exercise accountability measures, with insight, with honesty and with wisdom.
I think Dr Koornhof was absolutely correct - we need to talk eye-to-eye here. We cannot afford to simply trash an institution that is so critical to the economy and to the future of this country, as is being done in certain quarters in this country. We have to recognise what it is actually achieving.
Yes, there was a glitch in 2008. Yes, it was government that actually stopped it, government had to apologise, because Eskom warned government that there were going to be power shortages. It was not Eskom's fault, it was government's fault. Government has accepted that.
To continue to bash Eskom because it did not engage in that building is really playing games in terms of accountability. Since 2008, has anyone bothered to actually monitor, for instance, the coal reserves that Eskom is maintaining? The chairman says we did.
Eskom has not failed us. The lights are on, industry is booming, households are cooking. Why is there such a problem? Why are we told that Eskom is such a disaster? I would like us, as this committee, to really engage on this issue. I do not want us to be coming here to this committee with just flippant, often very prejudiced, remarks.
I have just come from a board meeting, a board breakaway with Eskom. It was chaired by the extremely capable Mr Mpho Mokwana, who I think is still here in this room. Chairperson, can I tell you that I have never been in a board meeting where there was so much energy, so much focus, and so much direction. All senior managers were there. Things are happening like clockwork.
In the interministerial committees that government has set up to confront energy - those nine or 10 streams - Eskom is a participant in virtually every one. The CFO is driving an extraordinary process to look at the funding models, and is really taking us places, including the National Treasury, where we have never been before.
Have we gone to those many power stations? Have we actually really acquainted ourselves with the scale and the enormity of the Eskom project? No, we have not. Do we know, for instance, that the institution in the Drakensberg reaches 50 storeys below ground?