Debates are raging about Eskom’s role and future after the corporation announced on 14 January 2021 that the country would, once again, be plunged into darkness. 

Eskom specified that the latest round of power cuts had been prompted by the loss of 5,358 megawatts of energy due to planned maintenance, and elimination of a further 14,748MW due to unplanned maintenance and breakdowns. 

It added that load shedding will probably continue beyond September 2021.

The announcement caused an immediate outcry on social media, with responses of “just do your job” to tweets shared by Eskom on how to remain productive during load shedding. 

The power cuts were entirely predictable. 

Confidence in Eskom is at its lowest ebb as the power utility hurtles from one crisis to another and it is extremely likely that load shedding will still be a fixture of South African life even beyond 2022. 

However, one has to wonder how it is that Eskom is incapable of providing electricity when large parts of the economy are shut down due to Covid-19-related restrictions.

It has been 13 years since load shedding was first introduced in post-apartheid South Africa – 13 years since construction work started at Medupi. Why are power cuts still happening? 

Brian Molefe can blame Cyril Ramaphosa all he wants (sour grapes much?), but years of corruption, mismanagement of skilled staff and supply contracts by managers, including Molefe, as well as inadequate forward planning, mean that 59 million people are today using power capacity that was largely developed for apartheid-era South Africa when only a third of the country was connected to the power grid. 

While we are on the subject of the power crisis, we must lament the fact that those who should be leading an inquest into Eskom’s problems have fallen largely silent over the years, except for the Democratic Alliance and a few others who issue perfunctory press statements whenever rolling outages occur. 

On this specific issue, the biggest disappointment has to be trade unions – and here I am referring to trade unions in general, and those in the mining and energy sector in particular.

It is easy to blame Eskom CEO André de Ruyter for all of South Africa’s energy problems – people love scapegoats. However, De Ruyter’s role is to do everything to keep the lights on while simultaneously preparing for Eskom’s unbundling into three units (generation, transmission and distribution), as announced by President Ramaphosa on 7 February 2019.  I’m not giving him a pass, but he is managing the hand he was dealt as best he can. He is fulfilling the mandate that he was appointed to execute.

Now, back to the trade unions: what are they doing while De Ruyter executes his mandate? Eskom is the motor that drives the South African economy and, while it struggles, trade unions cannot be silent because every worker’s job is on the line.

Unions should be out there, every day, leading debates around some of the following questions: How do we generate more electricity to make load shedding a thing of the past? What happens to workers when Eskom is finally unbundled? Do all workers keep their jobs, or are most simply cast aside as new entities opt for smaller, leaner and more efficient structures? Are worker jobs sustainable in the current fossil-intensive economic model? Is there space for a democratically owned and controlled energy space in South Africa? What type of energy mix does South Africa need and how many jobs would be created under a new green dispensation? What would be the benefits of this new low-carbon economy for workers? Is South Africa ready for electric cars? What happens to petrol service station staff if/when electric cars replace combustion engines?

The biggest unions were too close to the Jacob Zuma administration when the Medupi and Kusile projects started. Although the cost of installing renewable power plants had already dropped significantly by 2007, they backed the construction of more coal plants, thinking that they would be good for jobs. 

Imagine the number of renewable power plants that could be built in under five years with the R234-billion Medupi is rumoured to have cost! Thirteen years later, Medupi and Kusile have still not come onstream. Ironically, the jobs that Cosatu and others sought to protect have been lost to corruption, mine closures and now the coronavirus pandemic.

Incredibly, job losses and climate change imperatives have still not jolted unions into action. In typical reactive fashion, trade union federation Saftu announced shortly after Molefe’s appearance at the Zondo commission that Ramaphosa must be summoned to the commission immediately. Talk about priorities!

Unions cannot be Luddites, harking back to a bygone era. They must set the agenda with data that some of their units (Naledi, for example) already possess. They must push two debates front and centre of the post-Covid recovery plan: 1) democratically owned power plants in South Africa; and 2) accelerating the low-carbon transition, when we know that 2020 was the second hottest year on record, with global heating and multiyear droughts  becoming national security issues. That is how you keep the lights on and create more jobs.

If they need a template on how to set the public agenda on these big topics, they need look no further than the European Union (EU).

The EU plans to have at least 30 million zero-emission vehicles on its roads by 2030. After that, it is only a matter of time before combustion engines become history. These changes require an exponential increase in electricity supply and a lot of forward planning. The EU’s trade unions have not only made sure that these changes take place, but they have also ensured that all this is happening as coal and nuclear plants are replaced by renewable energy.

They led talks to expand electricity supply, bring down generation and distribution costs, and reinvent factories to produce more electric cars. They also helped build electric vehicle public charging stations. 

In Germany, workers shut down cities to call for a low-carbon transition. Union boss Roman Zitzelsberger vowed that “we will not let ourselves be deprived of our jobs and our future because employers have not done their homework”.

Union bosses worked with progressive politicians to implement new low- to zero-emission vehicle subsidies for new car purchases. 

In France, where there is a popular $13,000 electric car subsidy in place, 21.5% of all new cars sold in 2020 were hybrid or electric cars (243,651 hybrid cars and 110,912 100% electric cars). 

In Germany, which has a €9,000 electric car purchase subsidy, 562,000 low-emission vehicles were sold in 2020 (499,000 hybrid cars and 63,000 100% electric cars). 

Denmark plans to have at least 1 million zero-emission cars on its roads by 2030 (there are currently 2.5 million vehicles in all of Denmark!). 

In 2020, the market share for combustion engines in the EU dropped from 88% to 75.4%.

While unions keep the lights on and invent the future in other parts of the world, South Africa’s worker representatives are missing in action. As private investors from around the world prepare to pounce on the new Eskom entities when they are placed on the market, unions keep picking the wrong fights.

It’s time they woke up and joined the inexorable march of technology. DM