Our leaders don’t feel the full brunt of power cuts

IF ESKOM was a TV series, we would be in Season 15 of load shedding this year. It’s not getting any better.

The actors might have changed but the storyline is getting worse. It won’t be long before we’re in the final season, but the ending won’t be happy.

South Africa is an incredibly resilient nation, but there are limits to even this legendary stoicism. We need accountability, we need answers, instead, we get the opposite.

The white elephants of Medupi and Kusile, which are already heroically over budget and late, are a case all of their own, but the problem is far deeper than us relying on gargantuan coal-fired generators to keep the lights on while poisoning our water and asphyxiating us in the process.

We have immense natural resources. We have private companies and consortia which are very keen to help – but we have a government that says one thing and does exactly the other, making it deliberately difficult for independent power producers and anyone else to shoulder the burden.

We need a short, middle and longterm plan not just for our current energy crisis, but to rebuild our economy – because it literally has to be powered by electricity. Instead, we are overwhelmed with doomsday scenarios from Eskom, and platitudes from our leaders who are seriously out of touch with conditions on the ground. It’s enough now.

The government has to fix the system by developing an inclusive and coherent plan and sticking to it, achieving the various milestones to show the country that it actually does care. The problem though is that far too many of our leaders don’t feel the full brunt of power cuts. Their taxpayer-funded ministerial compounds are never load shed.

The rest of us don’t have that safety net. Perhaps Eskom can start scheduling Bryntirion (Presidential estate) for multiple outages every day like the rest of us?