South Africa is facing a long-running energy crisis. This week, the President of that country, Cyril Ramaphosa, even canceled his participation in the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization to deal with the issue closely. Former South African statesman, Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday accused the state-owned energy company ESKOM of mismanagement and blamed it for the country's energy crisis.

A debate on Wednesday focused on making some changes to ESKOM's management, according to the international press. Mbeki had already suggested that the current board of the state-owned energy company was not the best suited for the job. In fact, "Mbeki believes that South Africa lacks true leadership in all spheres, whether in government or in society," writes the Daily Maverich.

"Eskom is big business and therefore in terms of its leadership it needs engineers and economists, but instead we have politicians and accountants," said Mbeki, who was President from 1999 to 2008.

He questioned the defects in the Medupi and Kusile power plants, which continue to malfunction despite being the newest power plants built by Eskom.

Vice President, David Mabuza, said that although Eskom had made progress in identifying design defects in power plants and was correcting them, this process would not be completed until the end of 2027.

Mbeki's criticism comes after residents and businesses suffered long hours without electricity during the progressive blackouts. Eskom has put the country through different phases of power cuts since last week, with the power plant moving to phase 6 on Sunday, which saw South Africans suffer six hours of power cuts a day - sometimes more.