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Eishkom: dark days are back

YEARS ago, South Africa became used to the rigours of load shedding. The days were dark, literally, as Eskom struggled to keep the lights on. There was all manner of excuses; the coal was wet, the power plants needed urgent maintenance to keep going or they would fall over altogether with unimaginable catastrophic consequences for all. Eskom would go cap in hand to Nersa asking for breathtakingly high tariff hikes, while asking the country to use less power – and we were all too browbeaten to do anything but dig deeper and pay.

Then, just as suddenly as load shedding entered our lexicon, we had uninterrupted power – until this week.

Workers, who are precluded from striking as they are considered essential services, downed tools after management at the utility refused to consider increasing salaries this year. The unions asked for 15%.

Coal deliveries were halted at plants, workers picketed at Megawatt Park, in Joburg, and Eskom felt compelled to implement load shedding.

The unions have pledged to continue with their pickets and demonstrations as a precursor to a full-blown strike. Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has ordered Eskom managers back to the negotiating table, which is the right thing to do.

Eskom became the unfortunate poster child for state capture, from its chief executive Brian Molefe and his trips to the “Saxonwold Shebeen” to the packing of its board with Gupta-appointees and effectively paying the Guptas to buy a coal mine, from which it then bought inferior coal at inflated prices.

Cleaning up this mess will take time. The process has begun, part of which is the imposition of an austerity regime, but a zero cost-of-living increase is not the way to go, because the people who are directly affected never played a role in the perversion of the utility.