Our coal cannot brighten the West while we are in the dark
The right balance needs to be struck in South Africa’s energy mix of the future
THE announcement by Eskom that it is making rolling blackouts a permanent feature of our lives for at least two years has put a spanner in the works of any spin job about the willingness or preparedness of the government to fix our power utility.
Several ministers were jostling to outsmart one another about when South Africans would be relieved of the unbearable pain occasioned by the “state of darkness”. Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan was the loudest, by his predictable silence, while Minister of Minerals Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, is saying between six and 12 months and Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana bellowed out 12 to 18 months as the timeline.
The contradictory pronouncements seemed to have been aimed at impressing the “Great Reset” proponents at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and the incompetent board of Eskom would have none of it.
Hence, it decided to traumatise the nation and dampen the low mood even further with its latest outlandish pronouncement.
Instead of announcing a concrete rescue plan that would keep the lights on and increase our country’s energy security, the delinquents at Megawatt Park decided to rub even more salt into the wound by decreeing that we deserve no electricity since we are on the so-called dark continent.
The insanity boggles the mind, given the fact that coal-fired power stations like Komati were decommissioned when they were providing the national grid with much-needed megawatts. They needed only consistent maintenance and proper coal, rather than stones, in order to deliver.
When pressed for answers regarding the ludicrous decision to shut down a working power station, a bizarre response was offered: “The Komati station had reached the end of its operational life.”
Everyone knows that this is balderdash, since the aim was to repurpose it for untested, unreliable and expensive renewables.
In short, the decommissioning of Komati and others was to facilitate the so-called just energy transition, whatever that gobbledegook means.
Simply put, the closure of our power station is aimed at opening the way for independent power producers (IPPs).
We are being bullied and bribed to abandon coal – a natural resource that our country is abundantly endowed with and is the most reliable source of energy – and forced to opt for the untested and expensive technology that has failed spectacularly in the very countries that are pushing us to use it while they are returning to coal.
For greater context, let’s go back to history.
South Africa, a “two-nation state”, with one being made of mainly rich whites and the other mainly of poor natives, had a racial phenomenon manifesting in the provision of energy.
While the whites had access to electricity that was reliable and cheap and supplied by Eskom, the natives endured a life of darkness and the lack of a reliable source of energy. The enduring human spirit drove the natives to source energy from wood, cow dung and later gas (for those who could afford it) for cooking and heating, and candles for lighting.
It was only in the 1980s that some access to electricity was opened to those in the townships.
It was mainly an eyesore of tubes running openly on the walls, as if to make it a constant reminder that natives were being done a favour by a cruel regime.
Enter the ANC in 1994. Upon occupying office, the ANC embarked on a massive electrification programme aimed particularly at black residential areas in urban and rural areas.
To date, hundreds of thousands of households have been electrified. This, together with water and housing, is by far the biggest achievement of the ANC government. These are the gains that need to be consolidated and not reversed.
Unfortunately, the incompetence and shenanigans at Eskom have conspired to roll back the gains, with the criminal escapades having a devastating effect on people’s lives and livelihoods and our economy.
Irrational decisions that destroy the once-efficient electricity giant have, and are, being taken to destroy Eskom for no other reason except greed. Remember the theft of SAA for R51?
Irrespective of the lack of foresight and dithering by the government to timeously invest in a build programme analogous with or more than the projected demand for electricity, and the plundering and looting by corporate and other thugs through evergreen contracts, overpriced coal, low quality coal or even stones replacing coal, and the inexplicable cost overruns during the construction of Medupi and Kusile, Eskom remained in a position to keep the lights on.
Corruption, self-enrichment and greed were allowed to set in and become firmly entrenched. The decisions by politicians that included wrong appointments to the board and in executive management levels and the insanity of ditching coal for a costly experiment with so-called renewables sounded the death knell for Eskom.
Our country has been turned into a big, dark city, and this has brought the economy to its knees, while reports abound of the government accepting billions, if not trillions, of rand in loans from ruthless international loan sharks like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to advance the so-called just energy transition.
This against the backdrop of an ever-growing sovereign debt of about R5trillion that has required R370billion to service it while inflation is galloping out of control and levels of unemployment and poverty remain shockingly high.
It’s about baseload, stupid!
For power supply to be reliable, consistent and stable, you need baseload. This means fossil fuel, or simply coal. No matter how many wind and solar farms a country builds, coal has to be present as the other energy sources are unstable.
It is reported that our country needs to consistently maintain the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) – a percentage of maximum energy transmission that a plant is capable of supplying to the electrical grid – of above 70% if we are to keep the lights on and have energy security.
The EAF is below 60%, and the precarious situation continues to threaten the security of supply, with rolling blackouts being the result thereof.
Our country is facing baseload and rolling blackout crises. Hence, urgent, practical steps, including stopping all plans to decommission functioning power plants, ramping up consistent maintenance of all plants, and not abandoning coal as our primary source of energy, need to be taken.
The right balance in our energy mix has to be struck. We should also be averse to raising or accepting loans that have the effect of further enslaving us by stripping our energy sovereignty.
Immediate de-escalation of rolling blackouts aimed at ending the pain in a short space of time should be our immediate task while decisively dealing with criminality, including unravelling evergreen contracts that benefit apartheid colonial oligarchs, and other forms of corruption like switching coal for rocks.
For the transfer of Eskom to its line department to be meaningful, it has to be coupled with policy clarity and political will.
We must also embark on a massive recruitment of technical skills, including artisans, engineers, learners, and specialists. This has to be coupled with the allocation of a sufficient budget for spares and maintenance.
The swift replacement of deadwood, including the immediate departure of the failed CEO, André de Ruyter, by competent managers, cannot be overemphasised if Eskom is to be fixed.
To bastardise the saying that “Nero fiddled while Rome burnt”, President Cyril Ramaphosa shouldn’t be allowed to fiddle while South Africans wander in never-ending darkness. He had better act with the requisite resolve and speed to fix Eskom as South Africans have run out of patience and are no longer accepting excuses or scapegoating.
The announcement that the government is considering declaring a National State of Disaster is cold comfort as it brings back memories of wanton looting and plunder during the last one imposed to combat the coronavirus.
Much more needs to be done, including putting in place effective checks and balances.