Why did Ben Martins sign the Cabinet approval of nuclear procurement?

24 December 2015

The 21 December 2015 gazetting (see here). of Cabinet's decision to approve the procurement in the nuclear deal raises a remarkably important question: Why did Ben Martins sign off the gazetted decision, as the former Energy Minister, and why was the Cabinet decision dated 11 November 2013?

For two years government and subsequent Energy Minister Joemat-Pettersson have consistently peddled the line that Cabinet had not approved the nuclear procurement process which will cost South Africa unaffordable billions of rands.

Clearly government has been committing a grand deception. 

For all of Minister Joemat-Pettersson's term in Energy she must have known full well that Cabinet had agreed already to the nuclear build, yet she has led South Africa to believe that her frequent visits to Russia were merely market research. The truth that has now been outed is far more insidious.

It is clear that the decision to spend upto R1 trillion on nuclear builds was taken in 2013, and therefore engagements with foreign nuclear suppliers have been more serious than Tina Joemat-Pettersson would disclose.

The fact is that any promises to considering the affordability or economic impact before approval are also exposed as deceptions, and when Minister Joemat-Pettersson promised to do a "cost-benefit analysis" before approval, she was also deceiving us.

The South Africa public has been grossly misled.

In early 2014 Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom publicized that South Africa had already concluded a deal with it, and published details of the deal which our Energy Department re-published. The Department's speedy backtrack and denial of the deal appeared plausible at the time, but is now seriously in question. Cabinet approved the procurement process, and months later the Russians believed they had a deal - any denials of this sequence have also been exposed as a deception. 

At the first opportunity in Parliament I will call for a debate in the House on the fact that Cabinet approved the nuclear deal in 2013, and has misled South Africa for over two years.

The nuclear deal has always been unaffordable and unnecessary, but has now also descended into the depths of grand deception.

Statement issued by Gordon Mackay, DA Shadow Minister of Energy, 24 December 2015