Accolades at COP27 for ‘dear Cyril’

THERE’S a silver lining to the most ominous climate change cloud.

President Cyril Ramaphosa handed over his clean energy investment plan to funders at COP27 in Egypt this week. For the leader of a troubled nation who may soon be deposed by his own party and is under threat of a criminal investigation, it was a rare moment of pleasure.

Ramaphosa, whose greatest skills are drawing up plans and looking imposingly presidential, was in his element. The EU, Germany, France, the UK and the US have pledged $8.5 billion ( R150 bn) to his five- year plan, mostly in the form of concessional loans.

The tone, although diplomatic, was that the developing world in general, and Africa specifically, was entitled to redress in the form of non-repayable grants rather than burdensome loans. It remains to be seen whether the Western nations will be much inclined to abandon funding mechanisms that Ramaphosa describes as carrying “onerous costs and conditionalities”, in favour of largesse.

There are also the complicating factors that South Africa has proved to be spectacularly corrupt and, aside from when it has its palm out for greasing, has proved to be a very poor friend of the countries it is seeking funds from. Eventually, the Western democracies will shed their guilt in favour of the hard-nosed quid pro quo approach of Russia and China.

COP27 did, however, deliver some good public relations. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyden gushed on Twitter, congratulating “dear Cyril” for his brilliance, while there were plenty of photo opportunities for hand-clasping daisy chains with the UK’s Rishi Sunak, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, and the US’s John Kerry.

Ramaphosa will appreciate the warmth with which he was received as he faces dire challengers back home.

However, at home the transition to a green utopia looks as unlikely as his improbable promise four years ago of a New Dawn. Two reports this week highlight the vast gap that exists between plans and realities.

Eskom released its latest statutory assessment of the power system, which showed that even under the best-case scenario, it would not be able to meet the electricity needs of the country over the next five years. The worst-case scenario would see a 40% increase in the energy supply gap.

The other reality check came from market research company Yazi, which released a survey that showed the crushing effect Eskom’s power cuts have had on vulnerable South Africans eking a living in the informal economy. It found that more than 89% of the informal traders believed continued blackouts “will lead to a national uprising, including acts of chaos, increasing strikes and looting”. The danger of violence sparked by dissatisfaction over erratic power supplies is not confined to the informal sector. On Monday, residents of Witbank’s Emalahleni Municipality – who have been without electricity for six weeks because of a damaged transformer, and were told that they wouldn’t have power until after Christmas – ran amok.

They torched a shopping mall and looted shops, including a clothing chain store and a national supermarket outlet. The police allegedly shot one person dead and wounded two others.

There is also the intractable problem of a culture of non-payment for services. South Africa’s COP27 benefactors will, in calculating the price they’re willing to pay to assuage their white colonial guilt, be very aware that, whether it’s “green” or coal-propelled, energy sustainability is not only a supply issue, but also a consumer one.

Nationwide, more than 50% of the electricity bought by municipalities is subsequently not paid for by residents. In Soweto, less than one in five residents pay their utilities bills, and the township is responsible for R7 billion of the R51 billion currently owed to Eskom by all municipalities.

A couple of years back, Ramaphosa berated the municipalities over this. He said South Africans needed to change their attitudes and get rid of the “culture of non-payment”. The following year, Eskom wrote off R8 billion in Soweto debt.

Last week, Ramaphosa told parliamentarians that non-payment for services was “unacceptable”. However, during the very same session he hinted, in response to a call by the Gauteng premier for another Eskom amnesty for Soweto, that this was feasible, subject to unspecified conditions, to spur economic development in the township. This is a politically opportunistic and monumentally stupid idea under the best of circumstances. That the president would even countenance it, hard on the heels of passing round the begging bowl at COP27, is unfathomable.