Bright spark comments

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s comments about the shortage of electricity supplies, made during his speech at the ANC’s 103rd birthday party in the Cape Town Stadium last Saturday, would have been very amusing if they hadn’t been so grossly hypocritical.

I don’t think that anyone could sensibly argue against the point that during the days of the apartheid regime the electrical distribution system was largely concentrated in white areas, together with industrial and commercial areas.

But the system was kept in good standing with very effective maintenance scheduling, and although I don’t know what the generating capacity was above the maximum demand, I would guess it was at least 10 to 15 percent.

It was easy for the president’s speech writer conveniently to overlook that we have been a democracy since 1994, and that there was presumably nothing to prevent Eskom senior staff from forecasting the necessary capacity growth to keep up with ever- increasing demand, and informing the relevant government minister. I read recently that such information was conveyed to Thabo Mbeki around 1998, but he rejected any work on new power stations at the time because the money was required for the rearmaments programme.

That effort, in retrospect, would appear to have been largely a waste of time, except for the pockets of ANC cadres involved with the contracts.

Just look at what could have been the saviour of the present supply emergency, namely the two large coalfired power stations, Medupi and Kusile, which were ordered relatively early in the first decade of the 21st century, and which are now years behind schedule for the most irritating reasons – including bad construction techniques and appalling welding.

Was there no one left in Eskom who properly understood what professional supervision was all about?