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South African president shuns UN General Assembly over country’s power failure
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will not join President Muhammadu Buhari and other world leaders at the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, this week.
Ramaphosa, who was in London to attend the burial of Queen Elizabeth II, on Monday, instead, returned home to South Africa to address a national power crisis.
A South African local television channel, eNCA, had quoted the president’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, as telling the media that his boss would be returning home after the Queen’s burial, even though he was scheduled to travel to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly.
“He has decided to cancel that,” Magwenya said.
Ramaphosa wants to better understand what led to a large number of recent breakdowns at Eskom’s generation fleet and what progress has been made on the interventions he announced in July, Magwenya added.
READ: Amid endemic petrol scarcity, ASUU strike, Buhari returns to London for medicals
He said South Africa’s statement at the UN General Assembly will instead be delivered by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor.
Reuters reports that state-owned power utility Eskom moved to “Stage 6” electricity outages on Sunday for only the third time ever, meaning most South Africans are without power for at least six hours a day.
Eskom has implemented outages for over a decade that have choked economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation.
Amid growing public anger, Ramaphosa pledged new steps to address the crisis in July, but power cuts have persisted.
This is not the first time he has cut short a foreign trip over the power crisis.
In 2019, Ramaphosa ended a visit to Egypt early so he could return home to deal with the same issue.
The UN General Assembly opened on September 13, 2022, but the High Level Week is holding between September 19-23.
