Children’s fund and UCT are behind campaign attacking me — Mantashe

Mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe has alleged that a “foreign-funded” campaign against him aims to destabilise his department’s work and sour his relationship with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
These allegations were made during an interview with the City Press on Sunday in light of Mantashe increasingly being isolated in the ANC in a year when the party is set to elect its new Top Six.
Mantashe is currently part of this elite group, but his tenure as energy minister has seemingly put him out of contention for deputy president.
Sources inside the ANC have claimed Mantashe is gunning for the spot, but he denied it.
Over the past year, the minister has taken the flak for his controversial stance on the country’s future energy plans.
He has remained adamant that the country must include fossil fuels — such as coal — in its energy mix, despite growing momentum towards increased renewable energy use worldwide.
He also defended Shell’s controversial seismic exploration of the Wild Coast for oil and gas deposits.
Mantashe lashed out at a negative narrative around himself and his department that he claimed was driven by a foreign-funded campaign involving the “predominantly white liberal media”, civil society groups, and research institutions.
Mantashe claimed the campaign against him was being driven by money from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in the UK and moved through several channels in South Africa.
“The money is from the UK, goes through UCT — through an institution I will not name — which channels the money to the CSIR and civil society,” Mantashe said.
“The fact that we are aware makes us able to actually deal with the reality that we are confronted with.”
The minister said the information came from a report provided by the CSIR, but it has denied being aware of the issues.
A source in the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) told The City Press that Mantashe had been implicated in the Zondo commission’s upcoming reports on state capture and that he would be expected to step aside as a result.
A troubled legacy
Mantashe’s time as energy minister has been anything but uneventful and, more often than not, in a bad way.
Perhaps one of his most notable faux pas came in September 2019.
That was when he called on attendees of a mining conference in Australia to invest in “Hazenile”, a fake mineral that was punted as a breakthrough for the battery industry in an April Fool’s joke article from Smarty Energy International.
The minister told investors at the conference that Hazenile was “discovered in abundance in the area between the crypt and throne room caves in the Congo Caves in the Western Cape.”
The blatant misspelling of Cango Caves as “Congo” was also copied directly into Mantashe’s speech.
Experts said at the time the error would damage South Africa’s reputation.
But more recently, Mantashe seems to have been at loggerheads with other ministers known to be strong supporters of Ramaphosa.
Reports have suggested that Mantashe is attempting to stop Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan from shifting the country away from coal-fired power generation.
That is in the context of several rich nations, including the US, providing funding of around R130 billion ($8.5 billion) to South Africa over the next three to five years to help speed up the country’s clean energy transition.
Among the myriad other debacles in which Mantashe has seemingly been on the wrong side of the court of public opinion, and in some cases the law, include:
- Private power generation threshold — President Cyril Ramaphosa’s surprise announcement that government would allow private businesses and individuals to generate up to 100MW of their own electricity seemingly overruled Mantashe’s continued insistence that 50MW was enough. The decision was met with praise from business, energy experts, and even Eskom.
- Powership debacle — Despite rising evidence of suspicious dealings around the 1,996MW Karpowership deal, Mantashe has repeatedly postponed deadlines for the project’s financial close as it faces a court challenge and has not secured the necessary environmental authorisation from minister Barbara Creecy. Eskom is also refusing to sign an agreement with Karpowership as it first wants clarity on the long-term costs of buying power from the company, a move which Mantashe has criticised.
- Shell’s seismic oil survey — Mantashe’s department approved a permit for Shell’s controversial plan to survey for oil along the Wild Coast. The project is currently in limbo after a court granted an interdict to temporarily halt the company’s work. The minister has also vigorously defended Shell.
- Black mining ownership rules — Mantashe’s department lost a court challenge to new black ownership rules for mines introduced to the mining charter in 2018. Industry experts warned the rule change could severely dampen investor confidence.