— 01/22/2008
S.A.'s ELECTRICITY CRISIS

South Africa is experiencing its biggest electricity supply crisis ever, according to a spokesman of the opposition Democratic Alliance, Hendrik Schmidt. His statement today follows repeated outages – failure of the state's Electricity Supply Comission (Eskom). In a statement today, Schmidt says 'Millions of South Africans and thousands of South African businesses are being disrupted because of Eskom's load shedding exercises which, by all accounts, seem to be out of control. The tide of anger is rising and the time to take action is now'.

Eskom applied for a 18.7 percent tariff increase for 2008-09, but the state has granted it only a 14.2 increase. Its finance director says Eskom will now have to borrow more, and 'in addition the current electricity prices are unsustainable and will result in steeper increases in the near future'. Eskom uses coal to generate most of its power and claims that coal prices have risen more than 30 per cent in the past year, while the cost of plant and equipment has risen by 20-50 per cent.

'Disgrace'
Schmidt comments: 'It is a disgrace that the government should be allowed to fail the South African public in the way it has with regard to power outages and not have to account for it. Neither of the responsible ministers have uttered a word. They have not only literally left South Africa in the dark. They have also failed to shed any light on how the government plans to deal with the crisis'.

Schmidt has written to chairpersons of parliamentary portfolio committees asking for joint sittings no later than early next week to establish which officials and political office bearers are responsible and how they will be held to account, what steps will be taken to deal with the immediate shortfall of electricity, and whether any regulatory and legislative changes need to be made as a matter of urgency.

'The President's belated admission that the government should have listened to Eskom five years ago concerning South Africa’s electricity supply woes are simply not sufficient', says Schmidt.

POWER CUTS DISRUPT INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY TOURNAMENT
The Sowetan (22/1/08)
 
Five nations tournament rescheduled because of electricity failure
International players from a five-nations hockey tournament were fuming after matches had to be rescheduled because of deliberate power cuts in Potchefstroom. Tournament organisers said on Sunday they had to bring most games forward by two hours, because Eskom [South Africa's power generating utility - ed] could not give assurances that power cuts would not take place during the matches. This made it impossible for Test matches to be played under floodlights. The matches from last Monday to Sunday's finals have therefore been brought forward to daylight hours. Matches scheduled for 4pm and 6pm have been moved forward to 2pm and 4pm. The five-nations hockey tournament is the first time the world's top four men's sides have played with and against the hosts in a South African city. About 100 players from Germany, Australia, Netherlands and Spain are taking part in the tournament.