It matters naught how it’s spun, the problem of rolling blackouts — “load shedding” — lies squarely at the door of the ruling alliance. There was a brief moment when it was perfectly valid to make the argument that supply had to be expanded to provide electricity to millions of people who had not had the benefit of power for decades.
That moment has passed. It passed a decade after 1994, when the government met most of its strategic objectives and brought running water and electricity to millions of people.
Four important things, home truths, brought us to the point where we have started speaking of total blackouts with the very real prospect that South Africa’s electricity supply could start resembling the pockets of economic activity and privilege established during the Mobutu Sese Seko era in Zaire/DRC.
In part because of the colonial heritage of skewed development, and in part because Mobutu lined his pockets with little regard for the future, the former dictator made sure that there was adequate energy supply to centres of power where he dominated.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were three main centres of power in the country and several mining enclaves. One centre of power was the capital Kinshasa, another was the border region where Mobutu had a home (I visited the region in 1989), where ethnic loyalties spilled over the (then) Zaire and Rwanda border, and in Lubumbashi where Mobutu’s Israeli-trained death squads, the Division Spéciale Présidentielle or DSP, met their nadir at the hands of Laurent-Désiré Kabila (backed by Angola).
Getting back more specifically to the causes of South Africa’s slip into darkness. The first of at least four things that helped us into the dark is a lack of vision; the intergenerational policymaking that necessarily runs against the grain of “our turn to eat”. This latter point turned two otherwise progressive policies — affirmative action and transformation — into a type of Bacchanalia.
There was money to be made from affirmative action and transformation, and greed and gluttony were permissible — and it was the privilege of the free, whose turn it was to eat. The fourth was crime; crime in the boardroom and crime on the streets.
The lack of vision
In the late 1990s, a study was tabled before the government that warned of the coming darkness. The state had the opportunity, but lacked the foresight and public policymaking experience. We must remember that the ANC had virtually no experience in public administration and policymaking. They came to power and that seemed enough.
It’s not that there was no money — as with land affairs (land reform) the National Treasury allocated funds for infrastructure, which is essentially an investment in the future. I am reminded of a student telling me that Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s slogan (before it became Nelson Mandela University), “For Tomorrow” was “out of order… because we want to eat today”.
Affirmative action and transformation
The two-pronged strategy and policies of affirmative action and transformation are a second and third misstep. There is no use in beating about the bush.
At the outset, the objective was to get rid of non-Africans, especially whites, notwithstanding the fact that they may have the skills, institutional memory and the commitment to contribute to creating a better future for all South Africans.
So, you got rid of whites and replaced them with people who, for the most part, were inexperienced and lacked technical skills, and engineers with fake doctorates. We should be clear that many of us were miseducated for decades until 1994, and evidence shows that things have not become much better for most of the population.
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Nonetheless, it was okay to purge whites and those who were considered to be “non-African”, because transformation and affirmative action were ends in themselves… we did it, and we patted ourselves on the back, then participated in the grotesqueries of Bacchus, the god of wine, intoxication, ecstasy and freedom.
We were free, okay, but that was our condemnation. Waistlines expanded and luxury automobiles filled the parking lots of government buildings.
Criminality
A person who steals a loaf of bread can be charged, prosecuted and have a criminal record. The same is true if someone smashes a glass jug over the head of another person.
It is also true, though often ignored, if you wilfully and in a democratic order misrepresent yourself and thereafter run an institution into the ground — but you get away with millions. This is as true about people who milked the SABC and/or Eskom.
It is also true (also criminal) to steal electricity or to refuse to pay your electricity bills. If executives at Eskom or the SABC can become wealthy, there is no reason for ordinary consumers to pay for anything — and steal electricity. This particular criminality is blessed, as it were — permissible is probably a better word — because we are black, the country is in our hands, and we will do as we bloody well wish.
And anyone who has a problem with that, and with any of our wrongdoings, is counter-revolutionary, or hates black excellence, or is a shill for white monopoly capitalism.
Part of me thinks that it is too late to prevent the slide into the dark; another part believes that we have to make do with what we have and hope for the best.
What is difficult to shake is the feeling that at some point in the future, in 10 years or so, when Julius Malema is president, we will be at such a low base that turning the lights on in any location would be seen as a step up — a progressive move and cause for celebration.
It is fair to say that President Cyril Ramaphosa will not turn the lights back on. Pravin Gordhan will not turn public enterprises into self-sufficient, profitable entities and André de Ruyter will not provide a sustained (uninterrupted) supply of energy to the entire country. The damage is too far down the road.
Somewhere on the road is a corpulent, sweaty Gwede Mantashe hitchhiking to a galaxy far, far away. Like most of his Cabinet colleagues, Mantashe is terribly ineffectual. It’s a shame they won’t be alive when South Africa turns to electricity, but then again, not many of us will be. DM