Perhaps the government officials and Eskom directors can use some of their bonus money to buy a bunch of flowers and a card that says “We said we’re sorry, you know!” for the Diza family:

A man died at Mankweng Hospital because the operating theatres at Polokwane Provincial Hospital were undergoing load shedding and doctors there couldn’t operate on him.

This was claimed by sources within the hospital this week.

A nurse at the Mokopane Hospital’s casualty ward, Hilda Kgonyane, said Stephen Diza, 22, was stabbed in the abdomen and brought to the hospital at 3am on Sunday morning.

He arrived at Polokwane Hospital casualty ward at about 9am as Mokopane was not equipped for the operation.

Polokwane doctors found 40cm of his intestines protruding from the wound. They rushed Diza to the theatre – only to find that the theatre had no electricity as the hospital had been hit by load shedding.

According to a reliable source at the hospital, the hospital’s generator had kicked in but the chief electrician had then diverted power from the theatre to the other wards.

“The generator’s capacity is not enough to supply the entire hospital with electricity.”

He said doctors tried to get hold of the electrician from 9am to 11am – and did not succeed.

“Because of the patient’s critical condition, he went into cardiac arrest and doctors kept resuscitating him.

“Doctors asked for a helicopter to take Diza to another hospital, but the manager in charge said it was too expensive. They then asked him if they could operate in the casualty ward, but he said it was ‘inappropriate and risky’,” he said.

Doctors then called the provincial Emergency Medical Services (EMS) at 1pm to transport Diza toMankweng Hospital.

“EMS didn’t respond to the calls. Netcare 911 was called and Diza was taken to Mankweng Hospital. He died as doctors started operating on him,” said the source.

Had there been electricity Diza could have been saved within an hour, the source said.

Perhaps Thabo Mbeki or Buyelwa Sonjica can make another speech, asking us to please refrain from stabbing each other until new generation capacity comes online.

Mike Naicker is a white oke, but don’t call him that to his face. He hails from the capital of India, Durban, and has a YouTube riff on South Africa’s electricity crisis:

It’s very funny. But it’s not funny. Here is Bloomberg’s take:

Gold is above $900 an ounce and platinum has never been higher, yet traders are selling the South African rand faster than any other major currency because President Thabo Mbeki can’t keep the lights on.

Rather go to Mike Naicker’s excellent site. It’s less depressing.

This Wall Street Journal editorial is an interesting read, about a country few of us know much about, El Salvador.

The core angle of the article is the threat of a return to socialism because El Salvador, which converted to the dollar several years ago, is being hit hard by the Fed-induced decline of the dollar. There are many other observations that are topical, however, especially for other emerging markets, like South Africa:

Since 1992, El Salvador’s democratic leadership has opened markets, reduced the role of the state in the economy, and created the conditions for competition in most economic sectors. In telecom, the government boldly went against the advice of a Washington consensus, which insisted that a 10-year private monopoly was the only way to transition from a state-owned monopoly. (That model set Mexico and Argentina back decades in telecom competition.) Instead, policy makers insisted on full deregulation, and competition has driven down prices and delivered top-notch service.

An untenable public pension scheme has been replaced by a privately administered, defined-contribution system; this removes a massive liability from the government’s books and increases the security of future retirees. Import barriers have come down, international competition now exists in the financial sector, and the economy has diversified into services and low-tech manufacturing.

Though official statistics estimate growth from 1989-2004 at 4.1% per year, former Finance Minister Manuel Enrique Hinds told me in an interview here that he believes it is much higher. He has published extensive research arguing that traditional methods of measuring Salvadoran growth do not capture changes in the makeup of the real economy. When these are factored in, he says, the average annual growth rate is 6.2%. Mr. Hinds’s estimates are supported by World Bank findings and also jibe well with the fact that, from 1991 to 2006, Salvadoran poverty was halved and extreme poverty went from 28% of the population to less than 10%.

I’ll quote the entire piece below the fold, because despite the fact that the WSJ Editorial Page is now free, I still can’t figure out how to navigate to yesterday’s articles, and whenever I click on a link someone else sends, I get to a useless “resubscribe” notice I can’t seem to bypass. I found the link at the top by checking my cell-phone browser’s history and typing in the article code. Hint, hint, guys.

Read the rest of this entry »