South Africa blackouts caused by West paying us to cut coal, says electricity minister

South Africa is enduring massive blackouts because it agreed to be a “guinea pig” for the West’s green transition and close its coal-fired power stations, the country’s electricity minister has claimed.

Kgosientsho Ramokgopa attacked the country’s £6.6 billion climate finance pact which will see some of the world’s richest nations pay for South Africa to produce more renewable energy and shutter coal-using power stations.

The deal has been touted as a template that could be followed by other nations such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Senegal in an international effort to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases.

But Mr Ramokgopa told a meeting organised by Standard Bank that the closure of Komati power station, the first to be shut, was “an injustice” unfolding “in the name of the transition”.

He said that because of the closure, Eskom, the state power company, was struggling to ease power cuts.

His comments came as the country has spent nearly a year enduring severe outages virtually every day, due to a lack of generating capacity and frequent breakdowns in decrepit power stations. The cuts have reached 10 or more hours per day at their worst.

The resulting economic damage has put intense political pressure on the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party which has presided over the decline in what was once a world-respected energy system.

Party officials fear blame for the cuts will badly dent their showing in the polls, in an election which could be the first to see the ANC lose the absolute majority it has held since the end of apartheid.

Mr Ramokgopa, who has been tasked with ending the blackouts, said if he had the choice, he would restart the Komati power plant.

“We have international obligations, but I’m sorry, we have an obligation to the South African people,” he said.

He added: “We closed a power station which was the best-performing power station at the time that we closed it and because someone gave us money and said decarbonise, we are getting 217 megawatts of alternative energy and we removed 1,000 megawatts.”

However, Eskom said when the 62-year-old power station was shut a year ago only one of nine operating units had been running at the time, producing 121 megawatts. The others had been closed over the years due to old age.

“The shutting down of the plant will not have a significant impact on the national electricity grid,” it said at the time.

Mr Ramokgopa also echoed comments by Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s energy minister, that developed economies were using African economies as “guinea pigs” for energy transition.

Mr Mantashe said last year: “Developed countries sometimes want to use our individual countries as guinea pigs for experimenting. It’s painful, I must say that because when that happens, you get encircled... as a smaller economy, you are forced to be a conduit of the ideas of others, you can’t think, you can’t be original.”