ANC Slams Eskom for Politically Motivated Load-Shedding, Also Eyeing Coalitions

LOCAL NEWS

• Public Enterprises Min Gordhan assures citizens that the 1 Nov elections will not be affected by load-shedding, with Eskom providing 100 mobile generators to voting stations.
  • Gordhan also said the Treasury would be approached to give Eskom what it needs to deal with load-shedding.
• CEO De Ruyter said the switch to stage 4 outages was a deliberate decision to ensure emergency reserves were replenished enough for the elections. Meanwhile, ANC execs said the utility was deliberately playing politics to 'settle scores' but failed to provide further explanation.
  • This comes as analysts expect low energy security to be a key contributor for a drop in support for the ANC at the upcoming elections
• Political analyst says ANC's coalition talks signal tectonic shifts may lie ahead after the party admitted for the first time before an election that it is preparing for talks on coalitions.
  • ANC SG Duarte signalled to press that it has identified parties that it is not willing to cooperate with due to ideological clashes, but failed to name them. The DA has also said that it is willing to cooperate with the ANC in various metros

Data:

• 0930BST: Sep PPI m/m exp at 0.4% vs 0.8% prior
• 0930BST: Sep PPI y/y exp at 7.3% vs 7.2% prior