A price too high for the ANC?

ZWELI Mkhize was forced to stand firm this week as members of Parliament began agitating for Eskom to be given the right to sell electricity directly to householders bypassing municipalities.

It’s an interesting gambit – and understandable given the R139 billion owed to the utility.

The argument is simple – the municipalities are incapable of supplying power and collecting the monies owed for the service rendered. The problem is that it is unimaginably facile and short-sighted. If municipalities are incapable of supplying power and getting what’s owed, then the same goes for all the other services. Does the national government step in and do the same for water?

Water and electricity are key components of every municipality’s financial structure, but some residents don’t pay for them, not because they can’t, but because they won’t – a practice dating from the defiance campaigns in the 1980s to bring the apartheid regime to its knees. It’s continued ever since April 1994 as a presumed dividend for the poor

The elephant in the room is that no ANC government has had the stomach to grasp this nettle for fear of losing votes. Now, with general elections looming, there’s less chance.

Shifting the responsibility to the utility itself does not answer the key issue. People won’t pay, irrespective of who the money is owed to. But even thinking of giving Eskom the responsibility borders on criminal irresponsibility.

Taking municipalities’ key source of revenue – even if a large proportion of residents does not pay – will only serve to render them irresolvably bankrupt. What the government has to look at instead is how to fix failing municipalities – but that’s an even bigger ask than fixing Eskom.

The answer is simple. Pay for what you use. We do for everything else from data to petrol and food. But the ANC isn’t prepared for the possible price.