Sunday Times online 29/1/2008 — 02/01/2008
ENERGY CRISIS: NAME THOSE IMBECILES NOW
Raenette Taljaard
Accountability, not double-speak, demanded as economy grinds down

The prospect of closed gold mines in South Africa caused not only considerable dismay about the economy, but pushed up the price of gold. Added to this was the staggering image of South Africa's gold mines, a mainstay of old, closed for business and incurring heavy daily losses. This has led to talk of revisions of the domestic growth rate, stalled investment plans, concerns about the 2010 national World Cup project and of grim prospects in an already troubled global and local environment, with instability and inflationary pressures mounting. Eskom is a utility that ought to have been broken up a long time ago. The ill-advised comments of SA Communist Party and ANC executive Jeremy Cronin, blaming privatisation plans that were never effectively implemented, is a stunning example of the kind of policy direction we can expect to assist us in hastening the grinding of our economy to a halt.
 
'Failing to plan is planning to fail'
Apart from left-and-right economic policy squabbles, accountability for mistakes is what is missing in the 'load shedding' and 'national emergency' statements from the government and the energy parastatal. The old adage of 'failing to plan is planning to fail' could not possibly be more apt. We are solely responsible for hampering our own economic growth by failing to plan according to projections that predicted the current scenario in 1998. But what should happen now? First and foremost, plans must be made to rob Eskom of its ill-deserved statutory monopoly as soon as possible. Independent companies must be allowed to add generation capacity as soon as possible. Second, a full review must be made of the energy crisis and the assumptions that underpin the strategies and time lines for energy diversification. These must be in accordance with clean-energy alternatives and the speed with which such sources of energy can be brought into place.
 
Coal-fired technology a two-edged sword
One of the quiet scandals of Eskom's plans for increasing its generation capacity is that they rely largely on coal-fired technology - a dual-edged sword given the increase in coal prices, compounded by challenges on the supply-chain-management side of procurement (highlighted so vividly in Carte Blanche's expose of Eskom's woes, and the climate-change insensitive nature of the coal-fired plant strategy). Third, a full inquiry is called for, as the Opposition has rightly demanded. Though it will be an ex post facto exercise that does not address the immediacy of the planning required to solve the problem, it cannot simply be left to drop off the agenda. Consequences must follow the actions and failures to act that led to the crisis.
 
Zuma's double-speak at Davos
It is in this regard that newly minted ANC president Jacob Zuma's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos are of considerable concern. Those who assumed that the winds of change - whether ill or benign - would blow through the ANC post-Polokwane were in for a rude awakening. While news coverage of mining shutdowns was fuelling gold prices globally and tarnishing South Africa's image as an investment destination with a reliable power supply, Zuma could only mutter: 'I'm not certain whether, when there have been some shortcomings, we should punish people for that. Once decisions have been taken by a collective, you can't punish individuals as if they've done something deliberate.' This is the kind of absolving double-speak that must stop. Accountability must be restored, some key heads must roll in this sorry saga. And, fourth, President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel must urgently reassure the country, in their respective state of the nation and Budget speeches, that the energy crisis is being solved and that economic growth will not be compromised.
 
Needed: a credible strategy in place of myopic ideology
Already, the growth projections in the Budget and mini-Budget of 2007 appear to be in grave peril. Fifth, we need a credible strategy if myopic ideology, such as that espoused by Cronin, wins over more sensible arguments about breaking up Eskom's integrated, statutory monopoly. We need a credible strategy for how the significant capital expenditure required to fix this mess is to be financed. This has been a bone of contention in the past, with Eskom being told that it must recoup capital spending from tariff hikes. In an environment in which the Reserve Bank is already facing a tough inflationary battle, such a strategy will not work. Lastly, we need the SABC [the state broadcaster - ed] to stop trying to make us all feel better by showing us China’s power ills, as if to say that nobody in South Africa is responsible for where we are because other developing economies are experiencing similar woes. Though there are coal-supply similarities with China , the SABC's efforts to make Eskom look comparatively good are laughable.
 
[Raenette Taljaard is Director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and is senior lecturer in the Postgraduate School of Public and Development Management at the University of the Witwatersrand. Between 1999 and 2004 she was the youngest member of the South African Parliament, in which she served as shadow minister of finance for the opposition Democratic Alliance. During this time she served as ranking opposition member on key parliamentary supervisory bodies including the Finance Committee and the Standing Committee of Public Accounts (Scopa), in which she became a fierce critic of the corrupt arms deal of the ANC government of President Thabo Mbeki. During her years in Parliament, Ms Taljaard was a principal critic of the government's policy towards the electricity monopoly, Eskom. She holds a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and is a Yale World Fellow, one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders and a fellow of the Emerging Leaders Programme of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and Duke University].