SA's electricity crisis | Mbeki calls for accountability

JOHANNESBURG - While the current Eskom management has to be held accountable for South Africa's electricity crisis, the role of former managers also needs to be scrutinised according to former president Thabo Mbeki.

WATCH: Eskom's power purchase plans

While delivering a speech at Unisa on Wednesday, he said the situation has been exacerbated by continuous bad decisions stretching back as far back as 2007.

Mbeki said, "in order to dealing with this electricity thing, it sure is to keep the lights on now but I think to understand the company better you need to go further back. Who took decisions like that?"

"One explanation I have seen for that, it is said that the managers who were in charge of this said they want to increase the possibilities for black economic empowerment so that if you now have 20 contracts that means 20 black companies."

"If you had one contract I suppose it means one black company. That's the explanation that was given. But that's part of the crisis. As you can see now, when they, Eskom announces that the reason we are having level 4, level 5 or whatever is because there's a power failure at Medupi, at Kusile and the old ones."

"Why are the new ones behaving in the same way as the old ones? Or misbehaving in the same way? We need to understand all of that in order to, as part of the contribution to the solution of the problem of Eskom."