The theft of power plants has deprived Africa of electricity

/Pogled.info/ One of the richest and most influential countries in Africa – South Africa – is sinking into chaos. The country almost lost the main resource that determines the entire life of modern civilization – electricity. This already has enormous domestic ramifications, but will have even greater political ramifications. How did such a large country get here?

A real energy crisis is raging in South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa has already called it “an existential threat to the economy and social fabric of our country” and he is by no means exaggerating.

Every day in different parts of the country there is a 12-hour power cut. The media is full of articles about the chaos that occurs in the consumer market because of this – when animals on farms die and goods in stores simply spoil.

And it’s not just the goods that spoil. Thus, in January, the population was even advised to bury the dead for a maximum of four days, as due to constant power outages, bodies in morgues were decomposing.

And it’s not about the spike in oil prices (South Africa’s energy sector is more than 80% dependent on coal). It is about populism, greed and disregard for basic economic principles.

The main culprit for the current tragedy was the South African tradition of cheap electricity (mostly for the companies) – for many years energy was actually subsidized by the state. According to the Washington Post, South Africans had the cheapest electricity in the world until 2007, when mass blackouts began due to insufficient funding for capacity maintenance and the country’s growing demand for electricity.

The authorities allegedly took into account the mistakes and in the period from 2008 to 2012 they almost doubled the electricity tariffs. It was assumed that this money would be used, among other things, to maintain the coal-fired power plants. They probably did flow there in the beginning – but the maintenance situation is back to where it was before. The coal-fired power plants stopped operating, and the money allocated for repairs, according to a specially created government commission to investigate the incident, was systematically looted because of a “corruption culture” in the state corporation ESKOM, which is responsible for the national electricity.

The situation reached a critical point in 2018 – since then a cascade of outages began, increasing each year. The logic of what is happening is apparently simple: some plants are out of order, they try to compensate them with energy from others (no less old), an overload occurs and they also stop working.

The authorities tried to remedy the situation by subsidizing private energy companies as well as by developing renewable sources. However, for some reason, no attention was paid to the maintenance of existing coal-fired power plants.

“Maintenance is not a new project, you will not have a ribbon-cutting event at the opening,” South African economist Haya Sithole explains his version of what is happening. As a result, today ESKOM’s plants are generating about half of their total capacity – and at the same time, coal plant accidents continue.

The authorities now intend to invest billions of dollars in ESKOM so that the company can refurbish all its coal plants – but this will take time. At least a few years. New coal-fired power plants can take up to ten years to build.

The American media suggest that South Africa choose the promising solar energy – according to them, it takes less than two years to build new plants. But first, solar power is unreliable. Secondly, the creation of new plants and storages for this energy requires huge funds, which the authorities do not have (the American authorities seem ready to help, but they have no guarantees that the allocated dollars will not repeat the fate of those that were sent to repair the coal-fired power plants ). Third, the government does not have these two years.

And it’s not just that February’s regular blackouts are costing the country about $51 million a day. The fact is that these suspensions could cost Cyril Ramaphosa and the country’s ruling African National Congress party power.

The management of ESCOM do not want to be blamed for the current situation – because, given the scale of the events, they are threatened with real prison sentences. Therefore, the outgoing director of ESCOM Andre de Ruyter said that the power plants have become a real feeder for the African National Congress.

“No director of a state-owned company in South Africa has allowed himself such sharp criticism of the party,” writes the Financial Times. The rating of the ANC has already seriously fallen (if in 2019 57% of voters voted for him in the elections, now only 40% are ready to vote), so he urgently needs to find and identify someone who is not from his own ranks. It will therefore support the ESKOM corruption story to the hilt and has already demanded that Ruiter immediately disclose the alleged known cases of corruption among senior party members – in the hope that Ruiter will not have “receipts” available.

Meanwhile, the South African opposition has joined this demand – only in the hope that there will be evidence of it. They understand that the shutdowns affect all sections of the population, and the unemployment rate in the country has already reached 33%. And if they manage to shift the blame for what is happening to the ruling African National Congress, then it will not rule for long.

Translation: V. Sergeev

Vote with ballot No. 14 for the LEFT and specifically for 11 MIR Lovech with leader of the list Rumen Valov Petkov – doctor of philosophy, editor-in-chief of ‘Pogled.Info’. Tell your friends in Lovech who to support!?

Subscribe to our YouTube channel:

and for our Telegram channel:

Log in directly to the site www.pogled.info . Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages. In this way, we will overcome the limitations, and people will be able to reach the alternative point of view on the events!?

Become a friend of Look.info on facebook and recommend to your friends