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.

At a press conference this afternoon, Louise Flanagan, who wrote a useful feature yesterday describing the inside of one of Eskom’s power stations, told me that the company’s sacrificial lamb, Ehud Matya, had described himself to her last Friday afternoon as “head of generation”. By Friday night, however, word was out that he had been ousted, and Eskom confirmed his sidelining to me in an interview on Saturday morning. MiningMX.com quoted Reuters about a management shuffle only yesterday, and the local media carried the story today. One wonders when Matya, a 20-year Eskom veteran, found out that Brian Dames had been given his job.

My comment on his sidelining stands:

If true, Eskom’s sacrificial offering is pitiful. It should enrage the gods of public opinion, instead of appeasing them. And as for Ehud Matya, if he has indeed taken the fall for his employers after more than 20 years of loyal service, this episode would strengthen his CV, not weaken it.

I just returned from a press conference in which the Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, explained that “we have been very lax in the use of electricity because it has been cheap”. Yeah, that’s true. It reminded me of what I wrote in October last year: Classic price control crisis. Or in my first post on Eskom, less than a month after this site was started: Eskom: we’re light-years behind, so pony up.

Some points of interest from the press conference are confirmation that switching off geysers will not, in fact, save electricity, but merely shift the load. The ministry’s recommended times for switching the geyser on is between 5:00 and 11:00, and again between 18:00 and 21:00. I fail to see how shifting loads to peak times, rather than to off-peak times is in any way convenient, but hey, the ministry knows best.

Minister Sonjica appeared rather testy when I questioned another suggestion: Using “any alternative energy source for heating and cooking rather than electricity, e.g. gas, coal, wood, etc.” First, she denied having recommended this, though I quoted from the Energy Saving Tips brochure in the media pack. Then she accused me of trying to “spin” the story by asking what the health and pollution impacts of wood and coal fires might be. After all, it is well documented that indoor cooking and heating fires are hazardous, especially to children. Not to mention that it causes lots of visible smog and used to be a major cause of devastating fires. The deputy director-general for electricity did point out that the department will be reviving a programme aimed at educating people how to make cooking and heating fires safer, but a photographer next to me just mumbled: “We made so much progress getting away from Primus [paraffin] stoves and open fires, and now this.”

A representative from Philips was quicker on the ball, spotting an opening to punt his company’s wonderful near-smokeless wood-burning stoves aimed at very poor countries.

The minister also had harsh words for those (like me) who made fun of her comment in parliament that we should “go to sleep earlier”, so we can “grow and become cleverer”. “A good message was trivialised,” she said. Apparently, she hadn’t intended to insult the intelligence of all South Africans, but meant her good message as a jab aimed at opposition MP and former leader of the opposition, Tony Leon, who asked what they should do when the lights go out. “You’re stupid, go to bed early, so you can grow and become cleverer,” she said, apparently only to him. I feel much better now I know only Tony Leon needs to get cleverer.

The electricity supply crisis that has South Africa’s economy in a mortal grip has been predicted for years. Though these pessimists had only basic arithmetic, elementary economics and common sense as qualifications, they can today claim vindication. That years of regular blackouts and would be this country’s lot, however, was known both within and without Eskom since at least the mid-1990s. If our central planners had analysed things closely, assuming only moderate economic success post-1994, they could have foreseen this even in the 1980s. Doesn’t “power rationing” sound awfully communist?

In many ways, the crisis caught South Africans completely unprepared. In early January, I wrote a column dismissing low-wattage fluorescent light bulbs as an ineffectual and expensive eco-fetish, and that even if some people prefer them, governments should not force such a choice on consumers by doing something stupid like banning incandescents. That column now appears spectacularly ill-timed. Even if the arguments remain valid (which they do), they’re rather beside the point now. I had not considered a catastrophic failure to meet electricity demand very likely. In short, I was too optimistic about the promises and competence of the government. I was naïvely willing to believe the repeated lies we were told by the Eskom fat cats and government bureaucrats that they had things under control.

The government failed its citizens in the most irresponsible, negligent and incompetent manner possible. Eskom directors got paid millions in “performance” bonuses. The shareholder that employs them — government — seems to think telling the media now and again that there is no crisis constitutes due performance.

The shortage of electricity, even if it turns out to be mild in the long run, has the potential to cause extremely grave consequences for economic growth, job creation, poverty reduction, price inflation, small-business survival, and investor confidence both here and overseas. Everyone except the idiots who caused the crisis says so.

Yet nobody has been fired. Our politicians didn’t even feel it necessary to shift the blame by some token dismissals of powerless and innocent underlings. They seem to think that saying sorry will make everything alright.

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Last year, after being cleaned out by armed robbers, I found myself in a tight financial situation. I had a lot to replace. So it seemed sensible to forgo the convenience of a laptop, in favour of a more powerful but less expensive desktop. Turns out I underestimated the catastrophic consequences of the government’s economic policies. Turns out I now need a laptop after all, just to maintain my income. My attempt at financial prudence has cost me dearly, and all I have to show for it is a treasured presidential apology.

Companies and individuals — those who can afford it, at least — have in the last few weeks spent fortunes recently on diesel generators, uninterruptible power supplies, solar power or water heating units, low-wattage lights, gas lamps and bottled gas, battery-operated electronic devices and batteries. Larger companies may be able to handle such expenses, but M-Net’s news magazine show Carte Blanche reported on one fellow who manufactures curious metal things for the mining industry, who is more typical of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that create most of the growth and employ most of the people in South Africa. He estimates that generating his own power will cost him at least a million rand a month, which his business simply cannot afford. Especially when his customers are shutting down operations. He’ll probably set up shop elsewhere, or go out of business. And he’ll be joining thousands of others, employing many more, who’ll shutter the doors as a result of such costs.

So who gets to carry the can for all these expenses? I’m not big into online petitions, and believe that even if they’re sensibly constructed, they carry little or no weight with policy makers. However, the sentiments expressed in this one are worth considering: have the taxman pay for everything. Just deduct all these unexpected and unbudgeted costs from your taxes with your next tax return. It’s a far simpler solution than having everyone sue Eskom and the government for the costs and lost revenue caused by their lies and incompetence.

A very welcome addition to the South African internet landscape is a new satire site that calls itself Hayibo. I have no idea who runs it, or who writes it, but it’s generally pretty funny stuff. Witness its take on the South African blackouts, for example:

Eskom vows to keep lights on, will burn Zim banknotes

Embattled power distributor Eskom has won the praise of government after vowing to keep rolling blackouts to a minimum by burning Zimbabwean banknotes in some of its coal-fired power stations. […]

If you’re casting about for ways to spend a dreary (and intermittently dark) Monday afternoon, you could do worse than idly browsing your way over there.

Browsing the website of the state-owned electricity producer, Eskom, where “loadshedding” schedules are published, is a depressing pastime for a sunny Friday afternoon. It’s a tale of woe that underscores the truth of the classic economic argument that if you control prices, you’ll get only shortages for your efforts. Witness:

The Energy White Paper of 1998 encouraged independent power producers (IPPs) to enter the generation market. Private sector investment was not forthcoming and in 2004, Government revised its policy and Eskom was given the green light to build new generation capacity.

Because of the low South African electricity prices and the slender returns they could earn, years passed without a single IPP entering the local electricity market. Meanwhile Eskom’s fleet of power stations got closer to the end of their design life while the demand for electricity grew inexorably higher.

The government has a nasty habit of describing such reluctance of the private sector to come to the party as “market failure”. But why aren’t they coming to the party? Low prices. And why are prices low? Because they’re regulated. For socio-economic development (read “central planning”) reasons, South Africans get cheap electricity — when they can get it.

The South African electricity supply industry, long the envy of the developing world, must be allowed to restore its reputation and resume giving its customers excellent service.

To achieve this, there must be co-operation and support (Thekga) from everyone. The rebuilding of a world-class electricity supply must become a national issue – a social rallying call.

Until that happens, domestic customers would do well to have gas bottles and other emergency equipment prepared for use, in case of unexpected interruptions.

The only thing this proves is that the social rallying call should be to liberate South Africa from the shackles of government social service delivery. It ain’t going to happen, folks. And since it won’t, we might as well repeal the laws that oblige the government to provide for us, while preventing private entrepreneurs from supplying the needs of their private customers.

If that means prices are going to rise, fine. I’d rather pay more for electricity and actually get it, than pay less and be told by my state electricity supplier to invest in “gas bottles and other emergency equipment”.

As Friedrich Hayek said, the cure for high prices is high prices (hat tip: Neil Emerick, Free Market Foundation). Only when prices are permitted to rise will they attract competition and investment. In turn, this competition will result in lower profit margins and a systemic decline in prices. But much more importantly than providing cheap electricity efficiently, only by permitting prices to float freely as demand dictates, will supply rise or fall to match that demand. Price caps on electricity can have only one outcome: shortages.