Cape Town - Fifteen-member civil society coalition #UniteBehind read out their Sona memorandum at a rally where they said they felt they would soon have to take electrification matters into their own hands as Eskom and the government had failed them.
The activists at the rally demanded, among other things, accountability from Eskom, which they said was broken and needed to be fixed immediately.
There were about 200 people at the rally, held on an empty stand on Hanover Street barely 300m away from where the president was preparing to make his State of the Nation Address.
#UniteBehind director Zackie Achmat said: “People with disabilities, the elderly and women are particularly badly affected by load shedding.”
He said as the government had failed to address load shedding, citizens would have to learn about electricity, solar power, its generation, transmission and distribution for themselves.
Achmat said that armed with this knowledge the people would then set about raising money to install solar power in certain places and show the government that informal settlements can be electrified.
“Load shedding is getting worse by the day, we have a constitutional right to electricity. We cannot be paying more for a reduced service. Eskom is robbing us. The people deserve a better power supply.”
Speaking on the sidelines, UDF president Magommed Ismael said over the past five Sonas all the ANC had offered was empty promises and corruption instead of governance.
He said it was time people demanded their rights under the Freedom Charter, which promised them governance.
The programme had promised speeches from Cosatu provincial secretary Malvern de Bruyn and SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) leader Zwelinzima Vavi, but neither turned up in the end.
Vavi told the Cape Argus that he was unable to attend in person but that Saftu had sent representatives.
De Bruyn said Cosatu had earlier in the day joined the SACP’s protest and he was skipping the #UniteBehind rally as he had a meeting to attend.
He said that their demands for Sona had been made clear in a statement issued on Monday.
In that statement, signed by Cosatu national spokesperson Sizwe Pamla, the movement said: “Workers and society at large are battling to cope with a 43% unemployment rate, rising levels of debt and an economy struggling to emerge from a deep recession.”
Cosatu said the situation was worsened by 10 hours of load shedding a day, a deteriorating passenger and freight rail network under siege from criminal syndicates, rampant levels of crime and corruption, and dysfunctional municipalities unable to provide basic services.
At a neighbouring rally on the same stand hosted by People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), Numsa regional treasurer Nazeema Samuels said the fact that rallies such as those on Hanover Street were being held at the same time as the official Sona showed that “people had lost hope in the government’s ability to move the sinking ship of state to safer waters.”