When the depth of the country’s electricity crisis became apparent in January this year, I noted with some amazement that Alec “The Bolt” Erwin, the minister in charge of public “enterprises”, told us it wouldn’t harm our economic growth. He seems to believe in the notion that if the collective decrees it, so it shall be. Why he didn’t just exclaim “fiat lux” we’ll never know. Surely, this would solve the perception problems South Africans seem to have in the dark?

I, on the other hand, called him an idiot who learnt nothing in economics lectures. I thought those who don’t believe Africans can run a competent government would claim vindication. I predicted severe inflation, and said that we’d be lucky if GDP stayed in positive territory. We can forget about poverty alleviation and job creation, I wrote elsewhere. Privately, I said, “by this time next year [meaning January 2009] we’ll be in recession”, but I couldn’t find anyone who’d accept even an even-odds bet on it.

Some commenters accused me of being overly negative, and several called me an afro-pessimist. I am pessimistic, yes, but it has nothing to do with people or geography. On the contrary, I have good reason to have faith in the ingenuity and productivity of free people, even in — or especially in — adverse conditions. My pessimism has to do with economics and government.

Maybe I was negative, but lo, just a month later, the first signs of the massive impact on growth in the mining sector became apparent.

Now, four months on, South Africa has double-digit inflation for the first time since our liberation. The central bank has jacked up interest rates by a massive 4.5 percentage points already, and its governor, Tito Mboweni, has just threatened a staggering further hike of two percentage points, which would bring it to 13.5%.

Our economic growth has crashed to not much more than 2% — thanks in part to a staggering 22% decline in the mining sector. The proximate cause? Power cuts, of course.

So now we face that dread curse of inflation that doesn’t buy growth: stagflation. Even the unions now argue that we’re heading for recession.

In response, finance minister Trevor Manuel seems intent on jumping off the same rhetorical cliff as The Bolt. He told parliament not to worry, “The slowdown we are experiencing is of a short-term nature.” He describes the causes of this deepening economic crisis as “short-term turbulences”. There will be growth! Fiat auctus!

Is delusion of competence a contagious condition? Is this what Thabo Mbeki means when he said that cabinet takes “collective responsibility for the decisions taken over 14 years”?

My initial response to Mbeki’s apology was, “Well, off you go then, the lot of you! One takes responsibility by resigning.” I had not considered that all Mbeki meant was that cabinet would get its collective story straight, and collectively play God, because what they say is all that matters. The rest is just racism or neo-colonialism or afro-pessimism or negativity or sensationalism or media hyperbole. Reality is created on command. Truth is what the government declares it to be. Hence its attempts to censor the media and establish its own party-run newspaper.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this to say I told you so (though I did). I’m not gloating that I know more about elementary economics than our minister of public enterprises (though I do). I’m the most modest person I know, after all (though besides that I have few failings).

I’m just wondering who dared disobey the honourable Alec Erwin’s command that growth would not be affected. I want to find the faithless exploiters of our collectivist misery, and expose them to public denunciation. Put them in the pillory and throw stuff at them, counter-revolutionary traitors that they are.

What better treatment for a prize-winning gravity-driven lamp concept than a take-down-and-send-up? Daniel Rutter, an Australian journalist and blogger, is the author of this cutting use of elementary physics to debunk a patent-pending floor lamp designed by a Virginia Tech masters student (!). It won the second prize in a green gadget competition (!!).

A sample of Rutter’s observations:

It’s a funky looking thing, which was widely reported around the gadget blogs, and was alleged by its designer, Clay Moulton, to give the equivalent light output of a 40-watt incandescent bulb for four hours from the energy of a weight dropping about four feet, or 122cm. When the weight gets to the bottom, you just lift it back to the top and away you go again.

Now, it stands to reason that a mere 1.2-metre drop isn’t going to give you forty actual watts for four hours unless the weight is incredibly heavy. Ignoring losses, it would by definition take forty watts of power over another four hours to lift the weight back up again, which is 160 watt-hours, which is quite a lot. A normal adult human in reasonable shape can manage about 75 watts of output when pedalling away on a bike connected to a generator; it’d take more than two hours of such pedalling to raise that weight back to the top of the Gravia light’s tube, if the weight were heavy enough to make a constant 40 watts on the way back down.

So I just assumed the lamp’s brightness was greatly overstated, and wasn’t even four-watts-of-LEDs-that-are-sort-of-equivalent-to-forty-watts-of-incandescent. But since they’d clearly actually made the thing and it’d won an award, I presumed it did work, if only as a night-light. Fair enough.

But neither Clay Moulton nor anybody else has, actually, built a Gravia. The damn thing doesn’t exist.

[…]

The original press release about the Gravia on the Virginia Tech site now also contains a disclaimer from Moulton, though without any mention of him giving back the prize. I think it’s worth mentioning one line he uses on both pages, though: “I was told it was not possible given current LED’s, but given the rapid pace of innovation in low powered lighting, it would be a conceptual challenge.”

Yes, Mr Moulton, it certainly bloody would be a “conceptual challenge” to make a lamp that produces more than thirty times as much light as the laws of physics say is possible from the energy you put into it. That would be a pretty damn impressive achievement. I propose Virginia Tech not permit you to graduate until you do it. How’s that grab you?

Ouch. Let’s see what the US Patent and Trademark Office makes of this thing. Bet they issue a patent.

(Hat tip: Kriek Jooste.)

I’ve been fairly quiet recently, partially because I’ve had a lot of work that took me out of the office, and partially because I’ve had trouble with my computer on the few occasions I wasn’t. If I hadn’t been so quiet, it’s fairly certain that the continuing South African power crisis would have been high on the agenda.

This morning, after days of by-elimination guesswork, made more challenging by not having internet access, I realised that a power surge caused by Eskom’s policy of random blackouts has fried important bits of my new computer. My decision last year — to replace the computer I lost to an armed robbery with a new desktop rather than a laptop, on the basis that mere convenience was an unaffordable luxury — proved to be woefully over-optimistic and ultimately mistaken. It now turns out that a notebook computer, with its ability to shrug off daily two-hour power failures, is a basic necessity for anyone who needs a PC to do their job. As if that blunder wasn’t serious enough, now comes the icing on the cake: the unproductive alternative has been rendered entirely non-productive, having become a terminal victim of the very reason it was unproductive in the first place. It’s like I was robbed twice.

I’d like to thank Eskom, with all my heart. I eagerly await a cheque with which I can buy a new laptop. I’d also like to thank my parents, for their understanding and support, my friend Brian for lending me an old box of his, and my dogs, who endured my frequent irritability and late nights while tracking this problem during a week that was crazy with conferences and meetings and functions and missed deadlines. I feel so special. Last, but not least, I’d like to thank Alec “The Bolt” Erwin, who deserves my gratitude for his unwavering reassurance that the loss of my contribution to South Africa’s gross national income will not affect economic growth. Thanks for picking up the slack, Alec. These tears are tears of joy. You can e-mail my overdue copy to slavedriver@poorhouse.co.za.

As predicted, South African industry is showing signs of being hit hard by the electricity crisis that came to a head early this year. Gold Fields has issued results including a warning that despite a soaring gold price, which normally would make marginal mines profitable, it might have to close those mines because of the 10% electricity cuts it is being forced to make. It operates some of the deepest mines in the world, where life isn’t all that pleasant at the best of times, and is downright deadly without air and water being pumped into and out of the shafts.

It’s worth pulling this story from a major international newspaper, because that makes a point in itself.

Production, the fourth-largest gold producer in the world predicts, will be 20% to 25% down on the previous quarter, and will remain 15% to 20% down for the foreseeable future. Not surprisingly, this brings into jeopardy almost 10 000 jobs — some 18% of the workforce. And Gold Fields isn’t alone in this predicament.

Yet Alec Erwin, the communist unionist in charge of public enterprises — which includes the rather un-enterprising electricity monopoly — told us, not long ago, that despite the power cuts and rationing, “The growth of South Africa’s economy at the current healthy levels can continue.”

What a relief. Presumably, Erwin will put in some extra time to make up for those lost rands of Gross Domestic Production. Perhaps he can also make available, say, 9 700 gardening jobs, paying enough to support a family or so each. He’ll pull through. I have every confidence in his leadership, since his boss clearly does.

PS. Because of other obligations, I’m rather infrequently connected just at the moment. There’s plenty to rant about, but this week will probably be quiet around here. Never fear, though. I’ll catch up.

No plan to fix the power catastrophe in South Africa will work overnight. The crisis is deep and wide and will have grave impacts on economic growth, inflation, and poverty alleviation for many years to come. (I’m usually reluctant to bandy about terms like “catastrophe” and “crisis”, but they’re justified in this case.)

This proposal, relatively simple in principle, is from Advocate Hendrik Schmidt, a parliamentarian for the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. He makes a good, concise case, of which the essence is this:

Eskom’s monopoly over electricity supply is one of the main causes of South Africa’s electricity crisis. The permanent solution to our energy future lies in dismantling this monopoly. Until independent power producers (IPPs) are allowed to enter the market to expand and diversify the sources of power we have access to, and until we are relieved of the burden of having to rely on Eskom’s outdated and dilapidated processes and infrastructure, local demand for electricity will continue to exceed supply.

This should have happened ten years ago. Even at this late stage, however, combined with short-term market-based efficiency measures, it offers the best hope for as rapid and complete a recovery as possible.

A return to state-controlled insularity and an “emergency plan”, funded by billions of public money, could work too, of course. But it would be expensive, it would be far more risky, it would be wide open to corruption, and it would be implemented by people with a disproven track record. And even if it does work, it will likely leave the country worse off in the end (albeit without an alternative future with which to compare it).

Usually, pricing electricity for the poor is raised as the core objection to permitting the free market to prove its mettle. Capitalists will simply raise prices, they say, and profiteer from the crisis. For a while, that is probably true. FA Hayek wasn’t wrong when he noted that the cure for high prices is high prices. They attract competition by signalling that supply must rise to meet demand. In a free market, in which legislated monopolies do not control supply, this results in downward pressure on prices.

But those who think that the concern of high prices is justified should lobby for a simple subsidy for the first X kWH of electricity metered. Or call for a “progressive electricity pricing scale” that works just as progressive taxation does. I’m not saying those are great solutions. My fear would be that price regulation for poor consumers will discourage companies from serving markets that are expensive to serve. But to satisfy those in government and elsewhere who fail to grasp this logic, such policies will overcome the most common populist objections to liberating the market. And at least they won’t break the market mechanism entirely. At least they won’t leave us all critically dependent on a dysfunctional and inefficient state-run industry.

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.

(See update at the end of this post.)

Has this man been fired by Eskom? I asked a few days ago why not even a token underling had been dismissed over the power catastrophe in South Africa. According to a comment on that post, however, Eskom did fire one underling last week Sunday, in the form of the “head of generation”.

By “head of generation”, I’m guessing we’re talking about Ehud Matya, the managing director of Eskom’s Generation Division, who earned R2.8 million for his efforts. There has been no media release, and no newspaper has reported this. Attempts to confirm the veracity of this report with Eskom have so far met without any response (though in their defence, it is Saturday morning).

Here’s what I’ve been able to discover about Ehud Nyameko Matya. Born in 1962, he became one of the first black engineering graduates on an Eskom bursary in 1986, according to a lengthy case study on Eskom by New York-based Ann Graham, published in strategy+business magazine under the absurd title, “The Company that Anticipated History”. (Granted, Graham probably intended to refer to the non-racial future of South Africa, but with hindsight that title is rather unfortunate.)

Matya has a B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering and a Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand. He also earned a Diploma in Business Management from Henley College in the UK, and holds a Certificate of Production & Inventory Management, according to his Who’s Who of Southern Africa entry. He has held various jobs at Eskom, including managing Duvha Power Station, and working his way through the Generation Division since 1998 to become its managing director in 2002, where he manages R200 billion in assets and 11 000 staff. In 1998, Eskom colleagues nominated him as executive manager of the year.

Early last year, he promised “no cutting of corners on maintenance“, which was one of many causes Eskom has cited for the recent problems. He has presented on extending the life of Eskom assets, which was one of the many causes Eskom has cited for the recent problems. He has been involved with ensuring adequate coal supplies for Eskom, which was one of the many causes Eskom has cited for the recent problems.

He has been quoted on occasion in the media, assuring us that everything will be just fine. During Cape Town’s initial power crisis in late 2005, for example, he said: “We have thoroughly discussed the energy situation with the City and believe that the action plan that we have developed with Eskom’s long term investment strategy will secure the City’s energy requirements for the long term.”

So perhaps he does deserve to go. One can’t help thinking, however, that Matya was just doing what he was told. That if he could have averted this crisis, he would have had to countermand his CEO, his board, at least two cabinet ministers, and probably the president himself. And he’d have had to loot the treasury for funds. One can’t help thinking that if he really has been fired, it’s a clear case of scapegoating and evasion of responsibility by Eskom’s board and the politicians that oversee it.

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.

Update, 2 February 2008 @ 12:30: Andrew Etzinger, general manager for demand-side management at Eskom, tells me that Matya has neither resigned nor been fired, but that he has been involved in a “reshuffle” of the executive committee. Still “part of the team”, Matya will now be responsible for customer contracts. Brian Dames, the MD of the enterprises division, has taken over responsibility for the new build programme, power stations, and coal and other raw materials, a brief which includes Matya’s previous responsibilities. A spokesperson for Eskom says that no resignations or dismissals have recently taken place at executive committee level or higher.

So all the graphics work to put Matya’s head on the spike appears to have been for nothing. Still, it beats the mug shot in Who’s Who, doesn’t it?

Now we’re back to the original question. Why have we not seen even token dismissals?

Nothing like a national crisis to expedite quiet crony deals on the side, is there?

Not long after a R20 billion power station contract for the planned Medupi plant in Limpopo was awarded to Hitachi, 15% of which would end up in the slush fund of Chancellor House, a company that exists solely to fund the ruling party, the Mail&Guardian reported on Thursday that another huge deal went the way of the ANC cronies.

This week it emerged that Eskom subsequently awarded the Hitachi consortium a similar contract, this time for “Project Bravo”, a second new coal-fired station. Bravo will be built near Eskom’s existing Kendal power station in Mpumalanga.

The Bravo contract was awarded without a further tender process. Earlier, Eskom justified its intended departure from standard procurement rules on grounds, among others, that it would save time.

Eskom has made no announcement about the Bravo contract, but construction giant Murray & Roberts let the cat out of the bag in a JSE regulatory announcement on Monday, saying it had “secured the construction contract to Hitachi for both the Medupi and Bravo boiler contracts”. Murray & Roberts is the Hitachi consortium’s construction subcontractor.

On Thursday a member of the Hitachi consortium, who asked not to be named, confirmed that Eskom and Hitachi had already signed the Bravo contract on December 14. The member said the contract was worth about R18,5-billion, slightly less than the Medupi contract but with similar arrangements.

Neat, guys. We’re proud of you. With all the raised eyebrows and corruption allegations, you never batted an eyelid. With supreme disdain you forwent even a token tender to hide your shame, but simply forged ahead with another fetid feat of, frankly, theft. Bravo, bravo.

Perhaps Naomi Klein should come visit South Africa (did you know we have splendid weather?) to take some lessons in “disaster cronyism”. See how it really works, and who really exploits whom.

There are two features of South Africa’s power crisis that are even more annoying than the consequences of the crisis itself; more annoying still than that the guilty and incompetent people who caused it are lying about it, and are still drawing their millions in performance bonuses.

One is the positive-thinking rubbish many people have been writing. The other are the insults and nonsense we’re being fed by government.

The Pollyanna brigade is everywhere, and perhaps its most annoying members are the CEOs who put on motivational-speaker hats to whip optimism into their staff. (For an example, see the e-mail at the end of this post, below the fold.)

They should know better. Yes, I know we’re going to have to buck up and do something. Yes, I know there are opportunities in every crisis. Yes, I know people are resourceful and energetic and innovative. (Though this is why they should have been responsible for their own service delivery in the first place, in stead of relying on government and being banned from competing in the provision of those services.)

That we’re going to have to buck up and make plans is a given. But we should never have been forced to waste our resources on this. We have better things to invest effort in, like increasing employment, reducing poverty, fighting AIDS and building long-term prosperity. And — as I pointed out in earlier posts about firing the guilty and fixing the economic policy that caused this — we had better make sure we’re never forced to waste our energy on unnecessary costs caused by incompetent government in future.

Positive thinking isn’t going to fix the unavoidable spike we can now expect in unemployment. It won’t make the inevitable resurgence in price inflation any easier for people to bear. It won’t repay the necessary unbudgeted expenses you and I and every business will have to incur. It won’t fix the economic growth we can now forget about. It won’t repair the shattered investment confidence. It won’t replace the lost jobs.

Yes, we’re going to have to survive all of that, and I’m sure we will.

But that doesn’t mean we should just sit around like beaten curs and grin and say thank you master after we’ve been violated, at our own expense, by the central planners in government. Stockholm syndrome (or beaten-wife syndrome) makes me angry. We should get angry, and kick the abusers out.

But what makes me angrier still is the constant barrage of undiluted bull manure Eskom and the government are shovelling down our throats.

Switch off your geysers, they say (and the CEO quoted below repeats this advice). They, of all people, should know that the energy needed by an insulated geyser is dependent on hot water consumption, not the duration of the heating cycles, unless you bath less than, say, twice a week. Or maybe they don’t know that.

At best, if geysers are switched off at the right times, they can aid in distributing loads from peak times to off-peak times, but since our “peak” time (last time I checked) stretches from 7am to 11pm, randomly switching off geysers isn’t going to make much difference. Much, much more energy can be saved by turning down the thermostat a little. Why are we being given such patently wrong-headed advice? So we can all feel that we’re Doing Something? That we’re Working Together For One Common Goal? Is this just demagoguery? I think so.

They tell us that China and Brazil have had similar power crises. Firstly, so what? Is that supposed to make us feel better? Does that mean our government has done a good job? In China, severe winter storms caused a very temporary crisis. I’m no meteorologist, but I’d swear I didn’t notice any destructive blizzards this summer. In Brazil, a severe drought caused shortages in 2001, because the country is heavily reliant on hydro power. Where is our act of God? Simple. We haven’t had one. Our government officials are wholly and entirely to blame. God had nothing to do with it, and I’d wager he resents the imputation.

They must think we’re stupid. Oh, yes, here we go. Our esteemed minister in charge of energy affairs: “Go to sleep earlier so that you can grow and be cleverer.”. Of all the insulting, patronising and idiotic things I’ve ever heard, this trumps the lot. Let’s leave aside the medical advice. This minister can’t even handle her own portfolio, and if she is just conveying what the health minister said, well, the exact opposite would be indicated. The simple fact is that using less power at the only time we actually have enough power available will make virtually no difference. Unless there’s something about the effect of price controls on coal supplies we haven’t been told about. Which is, of course, entirely possible.

South Africans, your leaders refuse to fire the guilty parties. Instead, they pay them performance bonuses with your money. They refuse to change the central-planning policies that made it possible for a handful of incompetent idiots to ruin our economy in the first place.

Now that they’ve abused your trust and burned your future, they’re insulting your intelligence. They’re telling you they really do love you. They’re telling you to grin and bear it. They’re asking you, what would you be without them? They’re telling you they wish you would just listen, for your own good. This is a classic pattern of abuse. So what are you going to do about it?

Update: Added the paragraph about China and Brazil. I knew there was some dumb excuse from government I’d forgotten to add.

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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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