President Cyril Ramaphosa last week announced sweeping changes to electricity generation in SA, ushering in what will hopefully be a new era of light and energetic industrial production.
Ramaphosa received kudos across the board. Yet the announcement is infuriating.
Why did we have to lose so much as a country before we did something as simple as allowing major energy users to generate and sell where necessary?
Ramaphosa made the announcement on Thursday. That evening I made calls to five people in Hammanskraal, Joburg and Pretoria. None of them could talk — they were all in some or other stage of load-shedding.
This is nothing new, of course. This has been a reality in SA for many years now. Yet the ANC government has consistently refused to allow private sector players to generate electricity independently.
It is only now, in the very heart of winter, when poor people are huddled miserably in the cold and dark, that this administration sees fit to do what it should have done three years ago (and the ANC should have done 15 years ago).
They expect applause. They deserve none.
What they deserve are our questions. What was the wait for? Why did this take so long?
We said goodbye to Zuma three years ago. How long are we going to blame him and his cronies for our problems?
Possibly the most damning exposé of this government and its incompetence and failure on electricity was a piece in the Sunday Times last weekend by Sabelo Skiti, which said: “On Wednesday night this week only one of Eskom’s 17 power stations was operating at full capacity. That’s not even the scariest part. That power station, Komati, is 60 years old and produces only 1% of SA’s electricity needs.”
Read that again and weep.
Here is the source of my fury. We are often told that the Ramaphosa administration is being held back from introducing serious structural reforms because of infighting in t he ANC. The so-called radical economic transformation (RET) faction, led by the Jacob Zuma-Ace Magashule combo, was supposedly holding these reforms to ransom and Ramaphosa apparently could not move without first bringing it to heel.
Yet the RET faction is made up of people who are going to jail. Its knowledge of policy is confined to empty slogans on nationalising the Reserve Bank and the expropriation of land without compensation. It was never interested in electricity provision except to loot Eskom.
Last week’s announcement could have been made safely way back in 2018 when Ramaphosa came to power. Why has he been sitting on his hands for three years, waiting for the absolute worst to happen?
No excuse for this will wash. What makes it worse is that poor South Africans were sitting in their houses, in the cold, while Ramaphosa and his entourage were swanning around in the UK enjoying escargot with the leaders of the world’s richest nations. It ’s an absolute disgrace.
There are other areas where we are laggards for no reason.
Years and years after talk of auctioning off high-demand spectrum, the process is still dragging along. Cellphone companies have taken the government to court, but a hapless minister seems uninterested in resolving the matter.
After the Zuma administration destroyed the country’s visa system, making onerous demands on some tourists and on skilled workers wanting to come to SA, we are still driving talent and tourists away by not reforming the system. Why?
We have finally sold off a majority stake in SAA, you say. That’s true — for R0. We should have sold ages ago and made some money out of the sale, but we ignored advice and followed Dudu Myeni.
We are here now. All these problems were caused by or exacerbated by the Zuma administration, of course. Yet the man said goodbye to us three years ago. How long are we going to blame him and his cronies for the problems we have?
The truth is that the hold-up in resolving the electricity crisis in SA, the freeing up of digital spectrum and so many others have nothing to do with poor Zuma or his pathetic faction.
The blame should be placed at the door of this administration and its snail’s pace in implementing serious structural reforms.
Ramaphosa’s energy announcement is welcome, but it’s too little too late. Faster.
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