Vindication for the racists
It’s not funny. It’s actually pretty scary. But all the white racists who voted “no” in the 1992 referendum, which asked white voters whether they’d be okay with “power sharing” with the ANC, are vindicated. Turns out there’s not enough power to share.
All the doomsayers who predicted infrastructure decay and economic collapse, all those who fled South Africa to make a home in Australia or elsewhere, now appear to have been right. They may have been right for the wrong reasons, and may have expressed it in distasteful terms, but right they were.
“There is no power crisis,” said president Thabo Mbeki in May 2006. Yeah right, dear leader. Amandla aWethu1, right? Sorry, Mr President, but a belated apology 18 months later doesn’t keep the lights on. (It’s worth noting that judging by the Google results this is just about the only significant apology Mbeki has ever offered for anything.)
Eskom, which is going to bear the brunt of the public’s dissatisfaction with the regular — often daily — power outages that will be our lot for at least the next five years, is telling the government not to advertise South Africa as a destination for foreign investment.
Bongani Nqwababa, Eskom’s finance director, said yesterday that the parastatal had advised the government that it wanted South Africa marketed only from 2013 for both local and foreign projects. It was inappropriate to advertise South Africa as an investment destination with low-cost electricity. “You don’t sell what you don’t have.”
He warned that the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium smelter in the Coega industrial development zone could be delayed. “Eskom needs to review supply to Coega.” Other projects, such as BHP Billiton’s plans to expand, were on the back burner.
When Eskom and Alcan had signed a 25-year power supply agreement in November 2006, both made commitments that, if reneged on, would incur penalties. Nqwababa said: “There must be penalties [but] I am sure they are cheaper than building a power station.”
Pranill Ramchander, an Anglo American spokesperson, said Eskom’s comments about stalling new developments were still under discussion. There was no agreement. Obviously, if it became government policy, it would affect projects Anglo had planned.
One wonders if FIFA has been informed. After all, it wants to run a Football World Cup here in 2010. Maybe they can play the matches in daylight and use old-fashioned tear-off tickets.
Eskom is still talking up the supposed “Independent Power Producers”, those endangered private-sector creatures that were supposed to start building or buying power stations nearly a decade ago, but declined the government’s proposal that they invest billions in power stations whose output would be priced by the buyer, rather than the seller.
The same happened with the disaster that is telecommunications. Having turned the state incumbent into a semi-private monopoly that raped South Africa for almost a decade, the government puzzled over why South Africa’s fixed line density was declining and telecoms prices were rising, when exactly the opposite was happening everywhere else in the world. So they cobbled together a duopolist, Neotel, and planned a government-run cable that will sell cheap bandwidth to this new competitor only. This idiocy is officially going ahead.
Yet these moves go to the root of the problem. The doomsayers weren’t right because blacks can’t run a country. Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises (who famously said “sabotage is everywhere” before saying “human instrumentality” would be a better term) is white as the driven snow. The doomsayers were right because a motley collection of communists, unionists, socialists and Keynesian statists can’t run a country.
I noted the genesis of the power problems in a post last year. It’s time the government turns away from the notion that key “enterprises” should be run by the state “for the benefit of the people”. The people, whether poor or rich, are not benefiting.
I can’t remember a time when more people were adamant they’re leaving. The debate isn’t about whether, but when. Here’s Wayne, one of the politics students who blog over at Commentary.co.za, making his case for leaving. I can hear the trite responses now: “Let them leave!” “Traitors!” “Racists!” “Good riddance!” But when everyone who can afford to leave has left, what will happen to South Africa? Where will the economic growth, the jobs, the prosperity, come from? These are exactly the sort of people this country can ill afford to lose.
The repercussions of these power cuts will be dramatic. We can forget about achieving those much-vaunted growth targets. We’ll be lucky to stay in positive territory, let alone achieve the double-digit growth that we really need to deal with 25% unemployment and high levels of poverty. And lo and behold. Writes one local paper: SA’s 2014 poverty plan in the dark.
Fanie Joubert, an economist at Efficient Group, said a three-hour power outage cost the economy about R2 billion in lost production each day, or 22 percent of daily output.”If sustained, the shortages may cut nominal GDP [gross domestic product] growth by 2.2 percentage points a year,” he said.
Expect inflation too. Lots of it. All these costs will eventually end up at the consumer’s door. The very same consumer that has been playing second fiddle to investors and jobs whenever the government socialists sit down to formulate industrial and economic policy. Think you’re battling to make do buying your half-loaf and milk today? Wait until retailers have been forced to send the contents of their fridges to the rubbish tip a few times. You’ll be paying twice as much.
Expect civil disturbance and crime. I’ll bet crime syndicates are carefully perusing Eskom’s load-shedding schedules, cursing the parastatal for not sticking to the appointed times. Add to that opportunity for looting, and an occasional panic when a packed disco or sport stadium is dumped into darkness, and we’ll have a right social mess on our hands.
Expect fuel shortages and service disruption. How the cellular networks, banks and hospitals keep going is simple: massive generators. But they run out of fuel now and again. We’re already running pretty hard on fuel suppply, and shortages are not unheard of. Expect more of them. And expect interruptions on many services you took for granted until now.
Expect traffic chaos. Oh, wait, it’s already here. One column in The Times proposes putting the ineffective crime-fighters that are the Metro Police on duty at traffic lights, before noting yet another calamity that escaped my notice: having to reset digital clocks all the time.
How bad is the crisis, really? I think it’s critical. I reckon we can’t afford any growth in energy demand for the next five years, and even then, if the projects that have been started succeed, without too much government corruption, the ramp up in supply will be slow. But in reality, it seems we have no idea. Even the Public Protector has felt the need to launch an investigation, and opposition parties are demanding answers from the government.
Yesterday, I spent a fortune buying up the last gas lights at a mega-warehouse style hardware store. I couldn’t get the proper full-scale ones, so I had to make do with dinky imported Italian camping lights. A roaring trade in generators was going on out front. Of course, the liquid petroleum gas industry is just as vulnerable to the government’s regulatory heavy-handedness and economic incompetence.
The only people crowing (other than battery, gas, generator and flashlight makers) are the environmentalists, who see a golden opportunity to flog a raft of green energy solutions. Some will work. Most will be expensive, inefficient or both. Ironically, all will be welcome in a country that can’t even manage to burn its oversupply of cheap, dirty coal.
This crisis should be a lesson in economics. It should force a re-evaluation of the wisdom of state-led growth and government-run services and infrastructure. It should discredit the “developmental state” nonsense that the communists and socialists in government have been using to justify state-capitalism, cronyism and central-planning utopianism. It should debunk the claim that we’re somehow different, and elementary economics does not apply to South Africa. It should prompt the government to cast off the burdens of restrictive licencing and price regulation. It should lead to the recognition that encouraging economic activity doesn’t mean subsidising and protecting and legislating, but means getting out of the way, with alacrity.
But I fear the lesson won’t be heeded. On the contrary, the citizens of South Africa, instead of uniting and taking the matter in their own hands by kicking out the fools and scoundrels in government, will become more polarised. And I fear the deepest cut, the most painful, the most dangerous, will be that the thousands of white racists, here and abroad, can now justifiably say, “We told you so.”
There’s your legacy, Comrade Thabo Mbeki. Now the last person to leave South Africa won’t have to switch the lights off anymore.
Update: Belatedly fixed a typo that caused a paragraph to disappear, starting with “I noted the genesis…”. Unfortunately, my usual post-publication proof-reading was cut short by — you guessed it — a “load-shedding” power outage.
- ”Power to the people!” [↩]
Great piece.
What he said.
Does it help that all our northern neighbours are hooked up to our grid and get supplied South African power until 2010?
So, here’s an interesting question. Industry draws more than two-thirds of power generated by Eskom. A big chunk of that power goes to BHP Billiton to keep its giant aluminium smelters running. Another huge chunk apparently goes to Mittal Steel. I’m told if we were to cut off those giant users, we’d have enough electricity to see us through to the switch-on of the new coal-fire power stations.
If we were to cut off those big users, thousands of jobs would be lost and government would likely have to pay out hundreds of billions of rand to compensate those companies. But would it not be better for the long-term health of the economy if we were able to supply power continuously to everyone else at the expense of those few big players?
(Oh, wait, I forgot. The country’s about to be taken over by a bunch of criminals and communists, also known as the ANC national executive committee, so we’re all screwed anyway.)
It’d be great for what’s left of the rest of the country. Assuming, of course, that the rest of the country can live with fewer jobs, less economic growth, and a permanent stain on its investment credentials. Not only would such a move sacrifice a large proportion of potential inward investment, but many local investors would take their big-project capital someplace else. Unless, of course, the government stumps up massive financial guarantees, which wouldn’t be so great for the rest of the country either.
(Russia’s nationalistic moves over the Sakhalin gas project make a good case study.)
But yes, halting the export of power would seem to be a good idea right now. I don’t know the details of the contracts, but I doubt the exports can be justified by the price paid for them.
Incidentally, for those following this via comment updates, I fixed a typo in the original post:
Update: Belatedly fixed a typo that caused a paragraph to disappear, starting with “I noted the genesis…”. Unfortunately, my usual post-publication proof-reading was cut short by — you guessed it — a “load-shedding” power outage.
Ivo, I found your post an interesting and informative read, however, I feel your conclusion will not necessarily occur.
Yes, we do have a crisis and a very serious one, however, I believe that people will find creative solutions.
Here is one such option that large power hungry SA businesses could purchase to supply their needs.
Toshiba nuclear mini-nuclear power plant
Way ahead of you. I already worked out the price tag in rand: R20 million. Noted it last month, complete with a home-cooked cartoon.
And now for the bad news…
The five year rolling-outage horizon is closer to fifteen, possibly twenty. Not only that, but you ain’t seen nothing yet as far load-shedding intensity goes.
If the existing aluminium smelters are cut off now, it will buy SA two years grace. It will also free up their scarce technical skills for power station construction.
Sure they’ll sue the crap out of ESKOM.
However, this will be a cheap alternative compared to cost of loadshedding to the economy.
The SA government will be a joint plantiff.
Good luck to ALCAN & the boys if they think the law actually applies to the ANC government in SA court.
People should realise that exporting aluminium is actually exporting congealed electricity. The raw materials is shipped in and the product is shipped out. The profit goes overseas. Power is the sole reason for its brief SA encounter.
Some plant is even based in Mozambique (Eskom powered, of course), so not even SA residents benefit from jobs.
SA’s finite resource is making offshore people rich, whilst the SA taxpayer is sucking the hind tit.
It’s ironic that now that SA has 2010WC.
Joe Public wont be able to afford the 2000 Euro ticket, and will also be prevented from watching the event on TV.
loved this post. only, don’t think hospitals are unaffected. take a look at http://other-things-amanzi.blogspot.com/2008/01/eishkom.html
Yes, Ivo, I realise I read that blog post of yours previously.
I want to ask, in the light of a variety of solutions to alleviate the current power crisis, why it is that you chosen to adopt such a negative outlook?
The short answer is that the problem hits at the core of the way this government thinks about economics, and that’s a negative that must be corrected if this country is ever to reap the fruits of liberation.
Okay, so it’s fair to say that the Mbeki government has seriously mismanaged its governance of South Africa, in many ways.
Mbeki has played favourites by retaining an incompetent Health Minister, for example. The Pikoli-Selebi affair, yet another.
And now, bubbling out of the woodwork, the current power crisis.
Is this not why the ANC chose to get rid of him?
Is there no confidence or optimism that a new leader (Zuma) will stop the rot and get things back on track?
And apart from new government leadership, surely business people themselves will find creative solutions to solving their power problems?
In Stockholm, they refer to the South African national psyche as “Tshwane syndrome”.
C’mon, anyone who cant see the government as being absolutely corrupt and incompetent from top to bottom doesn’t need lights to see. They need a white stick.
(Travelgate, Yengeni etc)
There was a time not so very long ago when the ANC couldn’t cause this type of devastation to ESKOM with limpet mines.
Will Zuma be any better as prez?
Allegations aside, and sticking just to a recent undisputed fact:
He had unprotected relations with a self-professed HIV+ Aids activist, whilst himself championing the national Aids portfolio.
That indicates poor judgment, it certainly doesn’t reflect the skills needed to run a country.
I prefer to hope that Zuma will be better than Mbeki.
I think cynicism is unconstructive.
We need solutions, not people throwing their hands in the air.
But, for those who do, they can exit.
[…] Vindication for the racists […]
The very point of this article is that those that have exited, with their unwelcome opinions, have been vindicated.
It goes on to make the point that these same opinionated people that exited are now the constructive-types elsewhere on the globe. It also says they are the sort SA can ill afford to lose.
They may exhibit ‘cynicism’ in your view, but the point of the article, clear from the title, is that history shows them correct in principle.
In contrast, the present reality that is SA, also marks the commitee led idealism with a capital ‘F’.
Wishful thinking, unrealisic hopes and cliche’d ideals are idle.
People need accountability for government’s incompetence and corruption.
People need service delivery.
But, for those who do not, they can stay.
@ Phil: Love the “Tshwane Syndrome” comment.
@ Richard: No, I don’t believe that replacing Mbeki with Zuma will help. Pleased as I am that the people have reacted to failed government service delivery by voting out the guy in charge, I think the solution isn’t to replace him with another leader who promises government service delivery, but to replace him with someone who doesn’t promise what a government cannot deliver. If anything, Zuma will drive the country further to the populist left, which will exacerbate these sorts of problems, not alleviate them.
I speak as one of those who have left. Thanks to Dafari @ Wellinformed for the link here. Greetings, my opponent.
I have been back in the country for less than a month. My reasons for leaving had a lot to do with the economic future both for myself, and my family. The blatant nature of the racism at work, even though it is painted in flavourful hues of nice and pleasant, remains what they are. Policies to empower those other folks over there, at the expense of my hard-earned skills. Skills, which by the way, I was more than happy to employ to serve all of those who have been previously disadvantaged.
Anyways, I ramble.
As I have ementioned elsewhere, being able to judge from the outside looking in, and having been inside for so long, there is a perceptable slide towards darkness (pun intended). Perhaps this perception is merely my own, but I sincerely doubt that I am that stupid.
Peace
Has anyone seen or heard a comment regarding this issue from the court jester Fikile?
The real question is would anyone want to?
But no, I haven’t seen anything by our young comrade on this subject. It is, however, possible that he misspelled Eskom, which would have foiled my search.
A readable article. Yes, perhaps a little too negative. However, as a South African living outside South Africa, I feel the urge to comment. I left simply because I could not find full-time employment, (2 degrees, a teaching cert. and +- 10 Years exp.) I chose to take my hard-earned skills and offer them to whoever would pay me for them. By the way, I worked free-lance in SA, I earned more working 2 weeks a month than I do working here full time. What I wanted: affordable medical coverage, a working transport system, a relatively low crime rate and peace of mind. None of which I could find in SA. Maybe it would help if I added voted YES in 1992, I also partook in demonstrations from 1989 to 1994. Am I racist? No, I am not, I am demanding, I want to live in a peaceful country, I want medical coverage, I want to work, I want electricity. And yes I am prepared to pay for what I want. I wont pay if I don’t get it though!
Anyways, enough of that. The main complaint is about Eskom. Eskom are mandated to supply only a percentage of SA’s electricity. Yes, that mandate covers a large portion of electricity supply in SA, but not all. Other power companies, such as Johannesburg Power also supply electricity. The fault lies with the government, no one else. They have known this for over a decade, yet they have done very little to solve the the problem. The government need to give Eskom the right to build more power stations, and the right to supply more power, until the problem can be fixed. Sure it will probably take 20 or so years to fix the mess. SA also needs to realise that charity begins at home, and cut power supply to ALL its clients outside South Africa’s borders. Why should the average tax-paying South African pay for electricity for some one in Zimbabwe or Mozambique?
As a teacher I come into contact with many people, and so many have asked about SA, and I find it very difficult. Comment such as why is SA so violent? How do I explain that one? How do I explain the negative news fed to the citizens of my host country? How do I explain Eskom? Mostly I say I left because of those problems.
Onto Telkom, I have a 300 meg, yup you read it correctly, a three hundred megabit ADSL line in my apartment, I pay a grand total of R200 a month for said line. No data cap, nothing, just a decent connection. Oh, and it isn’t the best available!
And a footnote, the grass here is often rather difficult to find, and when you do you can’t walk on it, it isn’t greener either, it is mostly a brown dusty weed patch that is called a grassy park. But, having power, having ADSL, having decent medical cover, and not having to worry about some tosser mugging you for a crappy cell phone makes it a whole lot more pleasant! Oh, yeah, I miss SA, I miss blue sky, I miss open spaces, I miss family and friends, I miss biltong, I miss braais, I miss Castle Lager and Black Label, I miss so much more (blue oceans). But, We all have to make decisions, and live with those decisions. A whole lot of South African living abroad left SA not because of black power, (many of are minorities where we have chosen to live) we left simply because we want a better life for our families and ourselves.
“I fear the deepest cut, the most painful, the most dangerous, will be that the thousands of white racists, here and abroad, can now justifiably say, “We told you so.””
Yes, well, we did, did we not?? How can you explain the fact that we cannot find one single prosperous black African country? Fact is, the only time there was prosperity in Africa was when WHITES were in power.
My point is not limited to governance. Look, for example, at the state of the farms that are stolen from White farmers and handed to blacks. Just LOOK. Does it come to us as a surprise? Not at all. WE TOLD YOU SO. WE TOLD BLACK RHODESIANS SO. AND WE ARE TELLING BLACK SOUTH AFRICANS SO. It’s not our fault that they prefer to stick their heads into the sand. And for the record, the world should let them starve. Imagine the millions that go into feeding black Africans going into good causes, like providing civilised people with shelter, etc. At least they’d be grateful for it, and wouldn’t cut the hand that feeds them. As it stands, feeding black Africans is pointless. It will not make them any more competent, and it will not destroy their instinctive resistance to civilisation. Civilised behaviour is anathema to blacks. Rhodesia was first and foremost a project aimed at civilising blacks. We succeeded in educating them, but in the end no amount of education could tame their animalistic instincts. All that we had given them in the way of bettering their lives — medicine, infrastructure, etc — down the drain. This is what I told MP David Coltart who is one of those White Rhodesians who continue to keep their heads deep in the sand.
Honestly, Ivo, do you seriously believe that it’s a matter of finding the “right formula” and not an issue of skin colour? One would think that by now, at least ONE black-run country would have done it right.
I live and work in Dubai (but at the moment am not in the UAE) and I can say that a single Arab is far more grateful to us for having brought them our inventions and skills than all of black Africa combined. And if more Arabs adopt this attitude instead of getting sucked into the cycle of violence that is characteristic of black Africans, then all of the Middle East has the potential to become a Dubai — while the black Africans continue to starve. WE TOLD YOU SO, DID WE NOT?
As I said, they’ll say “we told you so”.
Yes, I seriously believe that it is economic policy that matters, not skin colour. Prosperity is created by free people trading freely in free markets, and this is easily visible on large and small scales no matter where in the world you go. Wherever those freedoms are lacking, because of socialist or corrupt governments, so is prosperity.
If you see a correlation of some sort, that does not necessarily imply causation. You need to be able to argue causation to reach conclusions about political economy or principles of government. Spurious correlations without theoretical basis all too often merely serve to support prejudice.
Yes, I seriously believe that it is economic policy that matters, not skin colour.
Haha, that’s a good one china. Unfortunately, it does not explain why black Africans are resistant to economic policies that might just save them from the starvation and epidemics they are condemned to; it also does not explain why black Americans are so “prone” to adopting violence as a way of life (statistics speak louder than any words I can say on that issue; the latest one was in Chicago a few days ago). At any rate, you must’ve missed this part of my reply: “One would think that by now, at least ONE black-run country would have done it right.” Yes, there is poverty everywhere, even in the first world, but none of it compares to what sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing for centuries now. In fact, were it not for colonialism, black Africa would probably have been largely unpopulated by now. Also, why is it that North African countries are relatively more prosperous than their sub-Saharan counterparts? Can you guess what the CAUSAL VARIABLE is in all these comparisons? No, it’s not economic policy. It’s not oil. It’s not colonialism. It’s skin colour, plain and simple.
For the record, I have visited ex-Soviet countries like Azerbaijan and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and I could not see any starvation or health epidemics; Azerbaijan ranks 107th while B&H ranks 121st on the Index of Economic Freedom.