Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2009-11-04 Reporter: Tebogo Ditshego

Arms funds to Eskom

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2009-11-04
Reporter Tebogo Ditshego
Web Link www.bday.co.za



Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s medium-term budget failed to consider our current energy crisis. In 1999 R10 could purchase 45 kilowatts (sic - kiloWatthours) of electricity. Ten years later R10 can purchase a mere 17 kilowatts, which means that electricity has increased by an average of 26,4% every year for the past 10 years. Over and above this is a 264% hike in 10 years *1.

Inflation has not surpassed the 8% mark in the past 10 years so what justified the 18,4% access average increase? These increases have already crippled the taxpayer.

Currently Eskom requires R40bn to fund its infrastructural development programme. These funds will be obtained by hiking electricity to the tune of 150%. Is it not time for government to intervene in this matter?

It is astonishing that we budget R191,866bn to acquire freight planes but we cannot afford to spare R40bn to avoid astronomical electricity hikes. What further boggles the mind is that we lose billions to alleged kickbacks and spend hundreds of millions on ministers’ cars and houses, but cannot afford to bail out Eskom.

Judging by our ministers’ extravagant taste I am sure they can afford a 2000% energy hike. This may be why they do not understand how the masses will not afford a 150% hike.

In the short term, let us rather spend less on arms and distribute these funds to Eskom. Italian Philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli once said “there is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others *2”.

Indeed, if war is in the pipeline then can it rather be postponed until our domestic issues are resolved?

Tebogo Ditshego
Kagiso

With acknowledgements to Tebogo Ditshego and Business Day.


*1       In the good ole, bad ole days the Boere had electricity production and supply under control.

They built lots of coal-fired power stations, learnt nuclear technology, got the French to build us a nuclear-fueled power station and entered into lo-term supply agreements with neighbouring states (with whom they were effectively at war).

The Boere also knew that they did not know everything about everything and appointed an English-speaking engineer with a Scottish background and with an earned doctorate to be CEO of Eskom.

kiloWatts and kiloWatthours there were aplenty. South Africa had the cheapest power in the world, so much so that they could sell excess power to aluminium smelters and mothball about a dozen smaller and less efficient coal-fueled power stations.

Times were good - very good.

But then the new kids on the block, most whom would not know a Watt from a What from a Volt from an Ampere from a Henry from a Farad from an Ohm from a Mho from a Moe, took over.and decided to distribute Eskom's capital budget amongst themselves rather build new power stations. The mothballed ones they either sold to China or the USA or allowed to be ransacked by their voting fodder for scrap copper. They never built any new power stations except one which they arranged to be built with an enrichment scheme whereby 30% of the equity was owned by the ruling party. But that power station is still years from completed and the construction price kind of doubled while some of us were watching and the rest of us were sleeping.

But these new kids never saw things unravelling - actually I'm talking nonsense, they didn't actually see it themselves, but it was pointed out to them - and preferred to issue themselves bonuses and things as well as contract extensions to the foreign owners of the aluminium smelters. They not only extended the time period of the smelters, but gave greater allocations of kiloWatts and kiloWatthours to the aluminium smelter in the neighboring country that used to be the Boere's enemy.

All the time the kiloWatts and kiloWatthours were fast running out all the while Thabo and Pinnoccio fiddled and entered into giant Arms Deals (SDPs, A400M Loadmasters, GBADS, Hoefysters, inter alia) to fight an enemy that even the Boere had no thought about.

Then some wet and stony coal (or is that wet and sooty stone?) from Thabo's and Pinnoccio's enriched voting fodder unfortunately synchronised with a loose bolt (or more likely a placed bolt) in the only nuclear-fueled power station and the only power station in the western part of the land where about 10% of the people live and the kiloWatts and kiloWatthours just went away, at least the Eskom ones, for hours per day, day after day.

So the people went out and purchased their own kiloWatts and kiloWatthours at enormous expense.

At the same time about 80% of the voting fodder decided purchasing Eskom kiloWatts and kiloWatthours was too expensive and problematic that they hired their own expertise and they wired around the meter boxes and control fuses and pre-paid meters so that the kiloWatts and kiloWatthours flowed for free.

In the meantime the country lost a few hundred billion Rands of lost production and burnt diesel and petrol because Eskom's kiloWatts and kiloWatthours had run out.

But the aluminium smelters in Zululand and Mozambique were still sucking kiloWatts and kiloWatthours like there was no tomorrow.

But tomorrow has arrived.


*2      Which actually means war should be fought sooner rather than later.

Where can we find an enemy, other than in the Union Buildings and every government office across Azanialand, except maybe Goddesszillaland.