I was asked in discord last night why services have deteriorated so much in South Africa. The country is in a crisis at the moment with electricity supplies being restricted. This is serious as it has a knock on affect with everything we do. Thank god we don't have electric cars yet as the country would come to a complete standstill.
If we go back and have a look at why we have got to this point a few things do stand out. Firstly we had a crooked President called Zuma who was only interested in lining his pockets and his cronies. No one knew how bad it was or how deep the corruption went. There were lots of rumors and leaked stories throughout his tenure as President.
The Electricity issue has been hanging around for a while like a bad smell and just doesn't go away. Eskom which is the government controlled electricity supplier was taken over by the Gupta brothers years ago. From forcing suppliers into selling their mines to them for nothing which was a clever move if you are them.
The plan which worked was to renegotiate the deal with the biggest supplier who already had a contract to supply coal. They squeezed the supplier who was still mining coal by not accepting the coal as per normal deliveries. The mine had over a years supply of coal stockpiled by the time they were forced to cut a deal. The Gupta's through Eskom purchased the mine for the value of stockpiled coal. Eskom paid the Gupta's for the coal and they got the mine for free.
In the interim period the brothers were supplying coal at more than the normal rates and to top it off it was sub standard coal. The costs of electricity spiraled due to this. They had managed to put a puppet in charge of Eskom and just pulled the strings accordingly.This is not unusual and if you look around there so many unqualified people in positions that they have no right in being there.
Eskom have tried to push through serious increase every year by as much as 25%, luckily these have been rejected so far. Maintenance of power plants has been neglected for lack of funds due to mismanagement,theft and corruption in supplies.
Zuma was desperate to push through a new Nuclear power station, but his game was up. This deal would have made him 100's of Millions and the Reserve bank which was under scrutiny now rejected the deal. The country just couldn't afford it. It just amazes me that they have been building coal power stations even though the world is going green. We know why as the Gupta's were supplying the coal for these as well.
The government needs to get a grip and get what power stations they have back on track producing the capacity they should be. Reports state that some are only producing 20 percent of capacity. This is just not good enough and the public will be looking at alternative sources now.
Solar is the obvious option and the Government has tried to bring in licenses for users going this way. They are seriously worried that the ones who are paying for electricity will move away and leave them with a bigger bill for electricity. What everyone needs to understand is not everyone pays for electricity and a high percentage of the population don't.
It is like a gold fish bowl effect, when you remove half the gold fish the remaining are left with the bill. This won't work and this is why the government is worried now. Within 5 years at the rates the electricity prices are going up I would stab at a guess that more than 25 % of current users will be on solar and gas. This is going to be the next boom industry in the country and is long overdue.
Yesterday we were cut off from 11.45 am until 5 pm and today we are set for a 8.00 pm cutoff till 12.30 am. Not the best of times as this is putting serious pressure on the economy.
Image source puppet.org