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 loadshedding entered our lexicon, we had uninterrupted power – until this week.

Workers who are precluded from striking as they deliver essential services downed tools after management refused to consider increasing salaries this year. The unions have 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 very same headache for South Africans cost the economy about R80 billion a month in 2015. We cannot afford the loss again.

The unions have pledged to continue with industrial action 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 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 percent increase is not the way to go, because the people who are directly affected never played a role in the perversion of the utility.