Before the 2024 national election, Samantha Graham-Maré was fighting for power supply as Shadow Minister of Electricity. Following the election, she was appointed Deputy Minister of Energy and Electricity in the Government of National Unity (GNU). In this interview with BizNews, she speaks about her great working relationship with Energy and Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and ESKOM Chair Mteto Nyati. She also shares the story behind over 180 days of no loadshedding, details the interventions still needed to ensure that South Africa is not plunged into darkness again – and says: “…everything we’re going to be doing as a department will be focused on energy stability, but also on job creation, poverty alleviation, and making sure that this country moves forward and that we resume our position as the continent’s leaders in terms of energy and industrialisation around the energy space.”
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Chris Steyn (00:02.112)
South Africa is heading towards 200 days without load shedding. And with us is the Deputy Minister of Energy and Electricity, Samantha Graham-Mare. Welcome, Samantha.
Samantha Graham-Mare (00:15.136)
Thanks so much for having me, Chris. It’s always such a pleasure chatting to you.
Chris Steyn (00:19.572)
The last time you and I spoke, we were still in the dark ages. You were still on the opposition benches. We couldn’t see the light literally at the end of a tunnel. So much has changed since then. You are now in government. So let me take you back a little to that time when you and the minister were ships passing in the night. Now, judging by social media and your joint appearances, that has changed significantly. Tell us about your relationship with him.
Samantha Graham-Mare (00:52.238)
Well, Chris, even from when we were in opposition, we always had a wonderful understanding and we always had, I think, a good respect for each other. And when we met up at our swearingin ceremony, when we first became sworn in as MPs, it was wonderful. We reconnected. We had a lovely bond there. And then when the announcement was made and it was announced that I was going to be his deputy minister, I couldn’t think of anybody more I would rather work with than him if it was going to be somebody in the opposition. And I think he feels the same way. We’ve got a fantastic relationship. We have a very similar sense of humour. We have the same sort of approach to how we do our work. Neither of us are particularly big on protocol. We’re more about getting the job done. I have tremendous respect for the man’s intellect. He is just absolutely brilliant. And so, yeah, I must say it was an absolute blessing to end up being his deputy minister in this government. Not something I saw coming, but something that I really am thrilled about.
Chris Steyn (01:56.736)
Well, also before the election, your party. the Democratic Alliance was not so happy with the ESKOM board or some of its members. But recently, the chairman, the chairperson, Mr. Mteto Nyati, spoke at our BizNews Investment Conference and spoke about the great working relationship he has with you. And apparently, even your mother is a fan of his. Tell us about it.
Samantha Graham-Mare (02:23.434)
Yeah, you know, when you’re in opposition, your approach to things is very different to when you’re in government. And certainly for the time that I was in opposition, when I was Shadow Minister of Electricity, ESKOM was the big baddie. ESKOM were the ones who were responsible for load shedding, ESKOM corruption. And they were really the big bad wolf in our country.
And then I’ve gotten to meet them. I’ve had a number of engagements with them. I was invited to their Women Advancement Programme Empowerment Awards. I’ve gotten to know the chairperson of the board and I am absolutely blown away. He is such an absolute gentleman. He’s articulate. And literally, no matter how much we countered them, they made good on their promise to stop load shedding within a year.
So, one certainly cannot castigate them for the work that they’ve done. And yes, my mom’s watched him a few times on TV and she just is absolutely so impressed with him. She thinks he’s marvelous. And I said, he’s even better in person than what you see on TV. He’s such a gentleman. And even the directors…the heads of the various divisions are just incredible people.
And I think, you know, for a long time they went through, you know, they were being castigated by everybody. Everybody was hating on ESKOM and chatting to them now….You know, last year was their hundred year anniversary and they couldn’t even celebrate a hundred years of being in power because of the way everybody felt about ESKOM. So they were saying, you know, here was this organisation that had hit its Centenary and they couldn’t celebrate it because how would that have looked to the rest of the country if they were celebrating a hundred years and the country was in darkness.
So I think the people of ESKOM particularly felt the load shedding impact personally. And I think it’s something that we didn’t take into account when we were sort of on the other side fighting with ESKOM.
Chris Steyn (04:24.106)
Well, let us look at some of the positive developments that you’ve also been part of. How much has available power increased by?
Samantha Graham-Mare (04:34.166)
So when the minister took over that position, I think we were sort of languishing in the 50s in terms of energy availability factor. And now I know that some of the power stations are well over the 80s. I think the average has been round about the late 60s, early 70s. And we were promised 65% EAF by March this year, and nobody believed that was ever gonna happen. And that has definitely happened.
You know, it’s evidenced in the things like the other day, both units at Koeburg went down… Nobody even noticed. It didn’t impact on us. There was no load shedding as a result of it. Whereas a year ago, that would have had been a Stage One load-shedding upgrade.
So definitely in terms of the work that’s been done by ESKOM in terms of their plant maintenance on their plants, I think that’s had a huge bearing. And they’ve also put good competent people into positions at those power stations. And I think that’s made a huge difference as well. And then obviously the lower demand because of load shedding, people went out and got rooftop solar. And that’s obviously played a big role in lower demand on ESKOM resources.
Chris Steyn (05:48.096)
Well, with the snow recently, think we would have probably been in stage nine if this happened last year.
Samantha Graham-Mare (05:59.327)
No, absolutely. Look, I was just going to say there has been an impact on the ESKOM supply in those areas. But again, we’ve been able to contact ESKOM, we’ve been able to escalate the issue and they’ve jumped to try to resolve it as quickly as possible. So there’s definitely a different feeling around ESKOM and there’s definitely a different approach in how they’re doing business.
Chris Steyn (06:25.6)
Can you tell us how much you have saved the taxpayer on backup power in the past 12 months?
Samantha Graham-Mare (06:33.59)
So I haven’t got the very latest figures, but at the last check, the saving on diesel. So what they did was we’ve got what we call ope- cycle gas turbines, and those are used when our power peaks just to counter the effect of the drawing of power on the utility. And the open cycle gas turbines should only be used at about 10% of their capacity. During load shedding, they were being used at about 60, 65% of their capacity. And as a result, we spent over 30 billion rand in diesel in the last financial year, trying to keep load shedding at lower stages. This year, so far, I’m aware that we have saved over 10 billion rand in diesel because we’re not using them other than for the peak times when they would ordinarily have been used.
Chris Steyn (07:29.706)
Now, what is the long term strategy for power supply in South Africa?
Samantha Graham-Mare (07:37.91)
So as we say to people, we don’t have load shedding. We haven’t had it for over 180 days. But it doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods at this stage. We still don’t have the capacity, should the demand suddenly spike, should there be a drop off in terms of our power supplies. We are not able to necessarily navigate through that.
So we’re looking at a number of interventions. Obviously, we’ve spoken a lot about nuclear being a possibility and looking at a nuclear build of about two and a half thousand megawatts. Gas is becoming more critical. So we’re looking at importing gas more substantially, particularly for our large gas users. And then with the just energy transition, we are having to look at how we decommission our power plants that are coal fired. So we’re having to look at alternative sources of energy.
And then obviously we’ve got the renewable energy resourcing. There are major projects in the pipeline. We’ve got a South African renewable energy master plan that is about to be distributed for public comment in October, and that’ll obviously look at the renewable energies. So that’s your solar, it’s your wind, it’s your battery storage. And then we’re also looking at alternative technologies like green hydrogen as fuel sources.
So there are number of interventions that we are investigating. We have to change our energy mix. We have to come away from coal-fired power stations because obviously with the introduction of the cross-border adjustment mechanism, we are going to be taxed as a country on anything that goes to Europe that isn’t using green energy. So there are a number of interventions that we’re looking at, some of them more long-term than others.
But we are working tirelessly to make sure that we up our energy provisioning while we also meeting the needs of our decarbonisation.
Chris Steyn (09:33.162)
Now, while people are absolutely elated with Eskom’s performance, they are not happy about the proposed tariff increases, Samantha. What can you say about that?
Samantha Graham-Mare (09:47.53)
Yeah, you know, it’s a really difficult scenario because, you know, we’ve got a whole new structure of ESKOM that’s coming into play because obviously with the unbundling of ESKOM, we now have the transmission side of ESKOM and then we have the generation side and we have distribution. So it’ll be three separate organisations and we have to fund that unbundling in some way.
But absolutely, we agree with you that, you know, the proposed hike is not tenable for the average person. People are already battling. We are finding that there is a huge energy poverty that’s happening in this country where people are having to literally choose between putting food on the table and paying for electricity.
But obviously our main focus is going to be on what we call the three A’s in our ministry, and that’s access, affordability and availability. So we have to address all three A’s if we’re going to make sure that we have a stable, sustainable supply of electricity that people do have access to it, but it has to be affordable. So we are looking at the energy pricing policy. We’re reviewing that. We’ve got that going through a number of iterations with various stakeholders. I know that ESKOM have just applied for a huge tariff amendment. We have to review the tariff structures. There’s a lot that we have to do.
And we’re also going to look at how we repurpose some of the grants that are used for electrification so that we can look at ways where we can take people off the grid so that people are using off-grid solutions which are not necessarily then incurring the additional tariff costs.
So there are a number of interventions that we are investigating, but right now it’s very concerning because we don’t know how we’re going to address it. We have to look at cost of supply. We have to look at affordability and we have to balance the two to make sure that ESKOM is obviously getting what it needs in order to continue to provide electricity, but that people are not being forced to choose between power and food.
Editorial Studio (11:49.294)
Between the devil and the deep blue sea, ut sounds like. Lastly, what are your ministry’s priorities going forward now?
Samantha Graham-Mare (11:59.214)
So in terms of the way our ministry is structured, I have specific delegations that I’ve been assigned. So I have several of the power stations that will fall under me. I have several of the provinces that will fall under me…I will obviously be responsible for making sure that those are all functional.
One of the big things that I have is, and you’ll love this, is that you and I spoke several times about Smart Meters. So demand-side management and energy efficiency are under my delegations. I will now be looking, I will now be responsible for finding Smart Meter interventions.
We will be looking at the solar water heater program, which has been an unmitigated disaster. We need to review that.
But we’re going to be focusing quite a lot on energy efficiency and how we can start making that not only a priority in terms of a lack of reliance on energy, but also on creating jobs around that.
Everything we do now needs to be looking at how we alleviate poverty and how we create jobs in this country. So every single aspect of what we do will now be focused on if we are doing energy efficiency programs, how do we create jobs around that and create a new industry, particularly with the decarbonisation and the GDP strategy. So a lot of what we’ll be doing is very people- centered.
And then we’ll also be looking at things like emissions is a big focus of my my delegations; carbon, you know the reduction of carbon emissions, So I think those are going to be some of the major priorities that we will be focusing on going forward.
From from our side, obviously the minister will be looking at some of the big things and then I have the nuclear, the nuclear side of our Department will also fall under me. So we’ll be looking at the new nuclear build. But we also want to destigmatise nuclear in this country and we want to make people understand that nuclear is not necessarily just about energy, but it’s also there’s nuclear medicine and we supply 20% of the world’s radio isotopes currently. We used to supply almost 100%. So we want to up our game in terms of our nuclear capabilities, not just in the energy space, but also around things like nuclear medicine and nuclear research and development.
So those are some of the priorities that we are looking at in our section of the ministry.
Chris Steyn (14:17.086)
Any last words you have for the consumer of power?
Samantha Graham-Mare (14:22.656)
Well, we’re going to be coming at you around energy efficiency and using energy more efficiently and also making sure that we start to understand that although our resources are finite and we have to make sure that we are using them in a way that is pragmatic and practical, that everything we’re going to be doing as a department will be focused on energy stability, but also on job creation, poverty alleviation, and making sure that this country moves forward and that we resume our position as the continent’s leaders in terms of energy and industrialisation around the energy space.
Editorial Studio (15:02.1)
Thank you. That was the Deputy Minister of Energy and Electricity, Samantha Graham-Mare giving BizNews viewers an update on this situation with power supply in South Africa. Thank you so much, Samantha. And I’m Chris Steyn.
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