Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2008-01-28 Reporter: Peter Bruce

The Thick End of the Wedge

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2008-01-28
Reporter Peter Bruce
Web Link www.bday.co.za


Ii's fashionable in these darkened times to brush aside discussion about who is to blame for the fact that we don't have enough capacity to generate the electricity we need. After all, isn't it more important to look ahead and change our behaviour? What's done is done, and all that.

But let's get the history right, lest Eskom gets away with what might come to be recorded as an act of sabotage against the effort a decade ago to bring the private sector onto its turf.

In the mid-nineties the Mandela government announced it was inviting interested private sector bidders to come and generate electricity in SA. It stopped Eskom from building new generating kit. And the bidders came. Utilities from all over the world descended on SA ­ the Americans, the British, the Europeans and even an Australian utility either sent representatives here or set up offices as they waited to hear more.

And they waited and waited. And after they waited some more they started to pack up and leave, complaining that the government wasn't serious about privatising the electricity sector. There certainly was vacillation from the government on the policy side. But part of the government's problem in publishing a so-called Request for Proposals (an RFP) was that it struggled to get vital information from Eskom in order to draw up a credible tender document. And why? Well, that's simple ­ Eskom resented the possible intrusion of foreign utilities into its market, and deliberately dragged its heels supplying information about power generation to the government.

The other part of the problem was that utilities got a bad name, with the California power crisis probably the most glaring example of the trouble they got themselves into.

The point of this little contribution, though, is simply to remind ourselves that Eskom is not an innocent in this story. It is all very well for the current CE, Jacob Maroga, to take responsibility, but we know he doesn't really mean it. The official version is that Eskom begged the government to be allowed to build more power stations and the government said "No". What happened was far more nuanced.

You'd have thought that Eskom would have shouted louder. Was former Eskom CE Thulani Gcabashe really that scared of offending President Thabo Mbeki that he meekly accepted that he was to shut up and do as he was told? Does Eskom do any scenario planning and, if it did and saw the privatisation failing, did it make no effort to ready itself in, say, 2003, to build capacity?

Enough already, I suppose. The politicians really are the most culpable here. It's a terrible irony that after all his valiant efforts to run this as a modern industrial economy, Mbeki should now face the ignominy of a kind of economic collapse *1 all too familiar in the rest of Africa ­ the lights go out, then the water can't be treated and the biggest industry in the country ­ mining ­ has to shut its doors.

I'd much rather have an electricity quota to use in a way that suits my life than be subject to the arbitrary "load-shedding" schedule that Eskom and local distributors dream up for me. They don't know when I shower, or eat or read the papers.

Perhaps the power crisis could be used not only to create a nation of energy savers, but a generally more independent society altogether. I know the ANC hates the prospect of the majority of people thinking for themselves, but it's quite an exciting idea. That way, when people stop taking the electric light for granted (you could have forgiven them for doing so in the first place), they may also stop taking other aspects of "delivery" for granted too. We may have to stand up and do things for ourselves. Some people say it takes a war to bind a society. The absence of electricity could approximate that.

At least a mere blip like the failure in the power grid hasn't stopped the new ANC leadership from focusing on what's really important ­ getting rid of the Scorpions. You'd think nothing else matters more. They have to be incorporated into the police in six months, says the party to the government. What about insisting that the 3000MW or so of Eskom generation capacity that isn't down for maintenance but is down anyway is up and running in a week?

Mathews Phosa, the brightest mind *2 in the new Jacob Zuma party leadership, was gloriously adamant in an interview last week with the Mail & Guardian that the Scorpions are history, but couldn't seem, when asked, to scramble together a coherent reason why *3.

That's because there isn't one. The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that. But it isn't too late to change this disastrous decision. If both the head of the National Prosecuting Authority and the head of the police reported to the same cabinet minister, half the problems around the Scorpions would be resolved. We need neither a safety and security nor a justice minister. Give it all to Home Affairs and keep the DG currently there in place and find him a minister with a bit of backbone!

With acknowledgements to Peter Bruce and Business Day.


*1       Mbeki is not the only one who has to now face the ignominy of a economic collapse - we all do.

He can just retire to enjoy his R4,5 billion stash somewhere.


*2      What a dim lot the rest must be.


*3      Exactly like Mbeki at the Selebi press conference.

At least Gerald Ford *4 could chew gum and pick his nose at the same time.


*4      This was the prick who was in the oval office in 1975 - remember the Angola War?

The Angola War lasted 13 years and nearly broke the country, about the time we are going to be fighting the Eskom War, which will well and truly break the country unless we can get rid of all these dweezils.


John Minto said :
"We were fighting for a better South Africa for all its citizens.
 
The faces at the top have changed from white to black but the substance of change is an illusion."
 
What did he expect?