SA’S DARK HISTORY OF DODGY COAL CONTRACTS

Corruption, mismanagement, industrial sabotage and technical incompetence at Eskom are nothing new. Neither is load-shedding. They date back to at least the 1950s, at National Party-controlled power utility Escom. And there is a link to SA’s worst mine di

ay the word “Eskom”, and most people’s blood will boil. Corruption, mismanagement, industrial sabotage and technical incompetence are, after all, synonymous with the national power utility that was, from 1923, known as the Electricity Supply Commission (Escom).

But any belief that the Escom of old was free of corruption and always able to keep the coal fires burning is far from true. In fact, its tenders in the 1950s were not just corrupt, they would also lead to one of the most catastrophic disasters in South African history.

SLoad-shedding 1.0

In 1948, shortly before the apartheid government came into power, Escom took control of the country’s electricity supply, with financial help from AngloAmerican Corp.

At the time, the utility was facing a crisis not unlike Eskom’s today. The problem was one of logistics: Escom couldn’t get enough coal to its power stations. World War 2 and its aftermath had taken a toll on the supply of rail trucks and locomotives.

And so it was, during the winter of 1951, that a word was introduced that today haunts our public consciousness: “load-shedding”.

In that year, an electricity rationing scheme was developed, with mining prioritised. The gold mines, for example, received 100% of their needs, though mines did have to stagger their production, and outputs were badly affected.

By 1953 the National Party government, packed with members of the secret Broederbond organisation, were sure of a second election win. As a result, the government via Escom launched a programme that would explicitly benefit the Broederbonders in the mining industry.

These “benefits for the Broeders” began when Federale Mynbou, a coal mining company owned by Broederbonders, managed to influence the department of commerce & industry to allocate the scarce rail trucks to it rather than to the English-owned coal mines.

Only, this didn’t fix the coal shortages; it simply robbed Paul to pay Pieter.

The Korean War (1950-1953) had also affected global supply chains, further darkening South Africa’s industrial progress. But the country had one thing on its side: uranium. South Africa had the stuff in spades and the US needed the metal for its nuclear programme.

But to extract the uranium, there had to be a reliable electricity supply. And so the US Export-Import Bank in 1952 provided a £7m loan for power-generation equipment for the Wilge Station near Witbank. Wilge could produce only 240MW due to a lack of water for cooling. This relatively small station would not have been economically justifiable, but the demand for electricity to extract uranium allowed for this inefficiency.

The US then poured tens of millions of dollars into Escom, $60m of which came from the World Bank. That’s a tidy R1.3trillion or so in today’s terms. Another $30m, raised from US commercial banks, funded both Escom and the equipment for coal mines such as Federale Mynbou’s Coalbrook.

Baantjies vir Boeties

A huge power station construction programme began and, with it, one of the great untold stories of South Africa unfolded.

Two major power stations, Taaibos and Highveld, were built in the mid to late 1950s, each with a capacity of 480MW. Most importantly, these stations were built near the Coalbrook mine in the northern Orange Free State.

Coalbrook mine was notable for two things: it produced low-grade coal with a high sulphurous content; and it was owned by the Broederbond-controlled Federale Mynbou.

Taaibos and Highveld were designed specifically to burn the low-grade coal from Coalbrook. Federale Mynbou also successfully “won” the tender for an Escom contract at Komati power station, in August 1958. Together, these contracts resulted in a 300% increase in Federale Mynbou’s total coal production.

With five power stations commissioned in the 1960s, four coal contracts were awarded to Federal Mynbou.

This cronyism, or what was called “baantjies vir boeties” seemed to cause little public outcry. Some simply saw it as delivering a justified share in the economy to the Afrikaners.

By 1962 Federale Mynbou, which had been founded in 1953 with £120,000 in share capital, had become the secondlargest coal company in the country after Anglo American Corp. By 1978, with a board of directors still packed with Broederbonders and after gaining effective control over General Mining Union Corp it made, in today’s terms, a R3.6bn after-tax profit.

The Broederbond’s first attempts to gain a significant foothold in mining revolved around Coalbrook. Not only was it the sole coal supplier to the Taaibos and Highveld power stations, but it was an important part of the governmentowned Sasol strategy to produce petrol and diesel from coal and natural gas.

A 1.7km-long conveyor belt from Coalbrook to Taaibos delivered 650t of coal an hour, allowing Taaibos, in 1958, to set a record for output for a power station in South Africa (2.81GWh a year). The economy was booming and the power stations kicked into action just in time to drive the boom. With demand for commodities high, the mines took advantage of the good electricity supply to make a killing in many ways, quite literally.

Safety last

Before Coalbrook began producing coal for Escom, the power utility sent an engineer, FA Steart, to inspect the mine. He warned Federale

Mynbou that the huge increase in production would require a large investment in safety.

He also recommended that no “top mining” (digging into the roof of the tunnels) should take place, and that the mining height should be limited to 2.9m. “Adequate barrier pillars”, he added, should be maintained.

Only, to service the almost unquenchable thirst for coal at Taaibos, Federale Mynbou began experimenting to determine how much top mining and pillar reduction could be done. Experiments were conducted in Coalbrook’s disused Section 10, where the roof was raised in sections up to 6.1m and safety barrier pillars were cut into.

After two months of criminally unsafe “visual checks”, it was decided that the experiment in engineering had been a success despite a report that said “the roof has proved extremely weak and several extensive falls have taken place”.

The mine’s management ignored this, and adopted the procedures across sections of the mine to keep power stations running at maximum capacity.

Then came the warning. On December 28 1959, part of the disused Section 10 collapsed. No miners were present and nobody was injured, but a week later, when the mine inspector conducted a routine inspection, no mention was made of the collapse, and top mining continued.

Less than a month later, at 4pm on January 21 1960, miners heard loud gunshot-like noises as strong winds whistled through the tunnels. They rushed up to the surface, but their concerns were dismissed as the superstitions of black men.

The mine’s engineer, G Dixon, was on sick leave. Still, he told the mining managers by telephone that he believed it was safe to continue. The mine manager, one W Lorimer, couldn’t be contacted as he was playing golf.

The miners were ordered back down the shaft and told to finish their shift. When they refused, they were threatened with arrest under the provisions of the Masters & Servants Act. Two men refused point blank and were arrested. After more threats, the other 435 unwillingly returned underground.

At about 7pm, there was a catastrophic failure of Federale Mynbou’s experimental engineering. The roof spanning at least four sections of the mine collapsed, killing all 435 miners. Only six of these men were white.

A cover-up began almost immediately. Black miners working in the other parts of the mine were sent to their compounds and locked up under guard.

The infamous Col Spengler, of the Special Branch, was sent to Coalbrook to ensure no insurrection took place and that the miners were effectively gagged. (Months later, he would play an important role in instigating the Sharpeville Massacre.)

Four commissions of inquiry were held into what is still the worst mining disaster in South African history. The miners were represented by SACP member and advocate Joe Slovo, though that came to an end when he was jailed under state of emergency legislation.

The inquiries found that Federale Mynbou was “negligent” and engaged in a “wrongful act”. However, no person or company was held to account. The final inquiry simply found that a lack of engineering knowledge had been the cause of the disaster.

The after-effects for Escom of what Slovo referred to as “a case of social murder” have not been recorded in any history book. But they were captured by Escom in an explanatory note it published to announce just why South Africa was facing load-shedding.

With Taaibos without coal, the load had to be taken up by other stations. Coal also had to be brought in by truck and rail from around the country. But that proved useless, as Taaibos had been built to handle only the lower-grade coal from Coalbrook.

In March the haulage at one of the other major mines broke down, leading Escom to report that all “efforts to avoid load-shedding” had failed.

The period of load-shedding was short, with several new, much larger power stations coming into operation.

Despite the Coalbrook tragedy, all those contracts went to Federale Mynbou. The electricity crisis was averted, but that had come at a terrible human cost.