The year 2022 is going to be remembered as the year when SA was plunged into unprecedented levels of load-shedding. This past weekend, after two weeks of sustained load-shedding owing to the breakdown of several units at Eskom’s coal-fired power plants, the power utility escalated load-shedding to stage 6.
Eskom has been cutting 6,000MW from the national grid – enough energy to supply roughly 4-million households. South Africans have been going without power for up to six hours a day. The impact on the economy is incalculable.
According to Alex Forbes chief economist Isaiah Mhlanga, prolonged stage 6 load-shedding causes significant damage to the country’s economy, wiping R4bn from the GDP for each day it continues. An estimate by Dr Francois Stofberg, a senior economist at the Efficient Group, is that the country’s economy is between 8% and 10% smaller than it could have been if we were not plagued by Eskom’s inefficiencies and ongoing load-shedding. This is devastating for a country that is battling with high levels of unemployment and a stagnant economy.
It stands to reason, given the severity of the situation, that President Cyril Ramaphosa should regard energy security as one of the key priorities of his administration. Since 2019, the president has been making promises to deal with the Eskom crisis – a crisis that can be traced to the very first decade of democracy. The failure of the ANC-led government to prioritise the timeous building of more power plants, as well as the rampant corruption that has been at the heart of the delays in the completion of Kusile and other power plants, are key factors in the crisis. It is increasingly becoming clear that Ramaphosa and his administration do not have a strategy for resolving the Eskom mess.
In an attempt to appear to be doing something meaningful, the president is engaging in performative behaviour. This was evidenced by his decision to cut short his trip to New York, where he was supposed to attend the high-level opening session of the annual United Nations General Assembly session just after attending the funeral of the late Queen of England. The basis for cutting his trip short is to “attend to the load-shedding crisis”.
At a symbolic level, it appears that the president is taking the issue of Eskom seriously. But in reality, this is a vote of no confidence on both his cabinet and the leadership of Eskom, which he presented as a solution but which is proving to be in over its head.
Performative politics refer to actions that are taken specifically with an audience in mind, to elicit a response or reaction. The president is not returning to fix anything. He cannot even claim that he is doing so in solidarity since he is personally unaffected by blackouts owing to his residence being a national key point and thus, in a grid that does not get turned off.
His basis for returning is senseless. He pulled the same stunt just three years ago when he returned from a state visit to Egypt earlier than planned, to meet with Eskom executives following six consecutive days of nationwide rolling blackouts.
Nothing substantial came of his return, as rolling blackouts have continued since then. And nothing substantial will come from his early return from international engagements now. The Eskom crisis is not going to be resolved by performances on the part of the president – it is going to be resolved by a competent executive leadership both in Eskom and the government.
As South Africans, we must demand nothing less.
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