ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe says the Northern Cape is the answer to Eskom's power crisis. Mantashe, who addressed the provincial alliance summit in Galeshewe, Northern Cape, says provinces should capitalise on its resources and stop replicating provinces like Gauteng.

Mantashe says rural provinces like the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo must start coining their own identities. Mantashe says these provinces should be the main drivers of the rural development agenda where issues of asset poverty and domestic food production are key.

He lobbied provincial alliance partners to commence work at creating a national headquarters of solar energy.  Semi-arid conditions make the Northern Cape province suitable to produce solar energy. "If you focus on claiming the space and becoming the solar energy headquarters and your work and invest time on that one in 5-10 years time that would be a reality and there would be permanent jobs here and they would be quality jobs during construction."

He also slammed South Africans who are not proactive in changing their own lives. "The issue about delivery is that our people must be assisted to liberate themselves from thing of waiting for government and hurdling insults at government to a situation where people know what they want and government should therefore then only facilitate their own development."

The Minister of Agriculture, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, will provide insight on issues related to agrarian reform, food security and rural development that are also up for discussion at the alliance summit.

Nuclear Forum

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters says South Africa will concentrate on nuclear as well as renewable energy as it tries to move away from reliance on coal-based energy. She was speaking at the launch of the Nuclear Forum in Pretoria. Peters says Cabinet is moving toward a sustainable nuclear programme with the potential economic benefits it would bring.

She emphasised the need for renewable energy which is bio-mass, wind, hydro, as well as solar and the need to consider and make it possible that they gravitate toward nuclear energy. She says they are talking to Cabinet for February next year, on a plan to implement the nuclear strategy.