- South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, led the first Cabinet Lekgotla of the Government of National Unity (GNU) at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Tshwane this weekend.
- In South African English, a lekgotla is a meeting called by government to discuss strategy planning.
- The term is a loan word from Setswana, meaning court.
The lekgotla will set out the programme of action government will undertake during the seventh administration. Attending the lekgotla are, among others, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, Ministers and provincial Premiers. Speaking to media on the sidelines of the all-important meeting, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the programme of action is guided by the priorities set out in the GNU’s Statement of Intent.
Speaking on the sidelines at the lekotla, Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, says South Africa will seek to build a nuclear plant for electricity generation at “a scale and speed that we can afford”.
“In the long term, we need to ensure that we anchor the baseload and nuclear is an important part of that intervention. We are working on the framework for procurement because we don’t want to discredit the process through a procurement process that is not transparent. We will do it at the scale and speed that we can afford as a country,” said Ramokgopa.
Turning to issues of electricity affordability, the Minister raised his concern that poorer communities are battling to keep up with increasing costs.
“The poor and those that are located in the townships are finding it exceptionally difficult to afford the increases in electricity. The pricing and the tariff is prohibitive and a lot of our people across the length and breadth of the country are not in a position to afford electricity. Those are challenges on the distribution side…and we know that over a period of time municipalities have underinvested in the maintenance, replenishment and protection of the distribution grid and of course we are paying the price now,” he said.
Thyspunt is a rocky stretch of coast approximately 12 km WNW of Cape Saint Francis in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is just west of the beach Thysbaai and south-east of Oyster Bay. The point is near the popular surfing beach of Jeffreys Bay as well as the holiday town of St Francis Bay. Image credit: Google Earth
South Africa’s state owned energy utility has applied for a licence to build a 2500MW nuclear power plant at Thyspunt. The Thyspunt site is located on the South African south coast approximately 4 km east of Oyster Bay, 12 km west of St. Francis Bay and 17,3 km south of Humansdorp (distances measured from the site centroid to the nearest town boundary). The main access road to the site is by an unsurfaced secondary road to Oyster Bay.
Oyster Bay. Image credit: Eduan Groenewald
Link to the public information document on the Thyspunt site HERE: Eskom Nuclear-Installation-Site-Licence-Public-Information-Document
Author Bryan Groenendaal
