Today marks 49 days without load shedding. It feels strange to write this. It feels like some kind of celebration – the acknowledgement of something miraculous.
On Monday, the minister of electricity, Dr Kgosientsho “Sputla” Ramokgopa, provided an update on the implementation of the energy action plan at Kusile power station.
He said the energy availability factor of Eskom has breached the 70% mark for the first time since August 2021. Additionally, the power utility has managed to reduced unplanned outages by 4000MW since April 26.
All this is great and it is being celebrated in many quarters, particularly by members of the ANC who see it as an indication that the deployment of Ramokgopa, and by extension, the decision of the party and ANC-led government, has rescued SA from the grips of the debilitating condition that is load shedding.
This was made clear by Ramokgopa himself who, in this address on Monday, said the turnaround at Eskom was not the result of Eskom itself but rather, the fruits of the labour of the sixth administration as led by Cyril Ramaphosa.
Hearing Ramokgopa speak, I couldn’t help but think how strange it is that my generation is being convinced that more than a month without load shedding is something to celebrate.
You see, my grandmother was born just a year after the Nationalist Party took power and declared apartheid official state policy. And so, she was at the coalface of the worst of apartheid policies – from the Group Areas Act of 1950 right down to the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970.
My late mother too, who was born in 1971, endured the worst of the draconian laws of the apartheid regime. They know a SA that was always separate, one where black people didn’t have even the most basic of services, including electricity.
But I, a child of democracy, belong to a generation that didn’t even know load shedding until a few years ago. I grew up in a SA that had and still has many remnants of its amoral past. But until a few years ago, these remnants didn’t include load shedding.
It is for this reason that while I acknowledge the progress that is happening at Eskom, I cannot help but feel that this is not something that I can celebrate. For me, load shedding represents far more than just a higher demand for electricity.
It represents a lack of vision and everything that is broken in our country. The energy crisis that SA is battling with did not happen spontaneously. The administration of Nelson Mandela was advised on the need to build the country’s energy capacity that had transitioned from serving a white minority and industries.
It would take years before Kusile and Medupi power stations would be commissioned. The building of these power stations has been marred in corruption of biblical proportions, and Eskom, once the jewel of Africa, has become a crime scene. The situation is so calamitous that billions of rands have been lost to the theft of coal and diesel at the power utility – by its own employees. All this has been happening under the same government that today has paused load shedding for 49 days.
It is very difficult to celebrate progress when it’s the result of regress. But more than this, it’s very difficult to watch SA go from a country that was on the path of progress to a country that is now dealing with problems that wouldn’t exist if we were planning for the future.
From load shedding to water cuts, these are problems we should’ve planned for decades ago. We didn’t, and we’re now paying the price. Do you understand, then, why I’m struggling to applaud Ramokgopa and our government?
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