Financial Mail and Business Day

The state of disaster is ... a disaster

PETER BRUCE ● Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.

Is President Cyril Ramaphosa deliberately creating a new state of disaster to get himself out of a political hole? He emerged from the ANC national executive lekgotla on Monday with news that the national executive committee (NEC), the party’s highest decision-making body outside of its national conference, had agreed that the imposition of a state of disaster was the only way to end load-shedding.

The announcement coincided with a statement also calling for a state of disaster from the Black Business Council, “to allow for faster turnaround of key remedial actions”. In other words, painfully slow regulations and regulators, not politicians, are the problem.

The NEC statement was emphatic: “Further ... lekgotla also called for acceleration of the work of the national energy crisis committee, by utilising the state of disaster legislation to bring about a multi-sphere command centre to better manage the crisis.”

So here it comes: an electricity crisis disaster command council. A sudden, huge, distraction. Up to 100 people, if the past is any guide, including most of the cabinet, directors-general, senior police and soldiers. It will hold regular briefings. Let’s be cynical for a moment — the briefings actually become the beginning of the 2024 election campaign. Why waste a good crisis?

The role of Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in Disaster, The Sequel is yet to be decided. Does Ramaphosa finally reshuffle his cabinet before plunging us into another state of disaster? Dlamini Zuma did so well last time, and with an electricity disaster, there’ll be a stampede for tasty new procurement opportunities to ignore. You don’t replace experience like hers easily.

It is all such a bad idea, it is hard to imagine how putrid it could get. It’s also hard to believe the DA is claiming credit for it. Really?

Someone is bound to want to close shopping malls early, and perhaps dim the lights in odd-numbered rows of shelves during trading. There’ll be reasons for restrictions on restaurants opening because, you know, hospitals need to save lives.

By now you would have thought the ANC capable of understanding its limits. Not a chance, if the statement is a true reflection of its debates.

“In facilitating vibrant economic growth and resilient infrastructure,” it says, “the government will implement mega and catalytic infrastructure projects which will include new cities as well as constructing government buildings, maintenance, as well as integrated transport and corridors.”

The most interesting thing about the new NEC’s statement though is that nowhere does it even mention the fact that the ANC national conference that elected it also overwhelmingly decided to move control of Eskom from Pravin Gordhan’s department of public enterprises to Gwede Mantashe’s department of mineral resources & energy.

There’s no way that is an oversight. The NEC deliberately makes that decision go away and it means Ramaphosa avoids, for now, a direct confrontation with Mantashe.

But in truth, the president is in full flight already. That forward motion he wants you to see is the scenery next to him moving backwards. You can almost hear the new Eskom board groan as its new, detailed, plan to raise the utility’s energy availability factor from below 60% today to 70% by the end of 2024 is now dripping with political mud.

I predicted the shiny straight nail Eskom handed the government last week would come back a corkscrew, and it has. There’s no need for a state of disaster. People just need to do their jobs properly, all of the time. The Eskom board plan, provided by management and drawn up before outgoing CEO André de Ruyter even joined, is its best shot. But 2024 is too late for the ANC.

There’s an election in May or June next year, and the ANC is terrified by its own polling, now made worse by load-shedding. It faces a near certain loss of a parliamentary majority, in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

But if Mantashe or even Ramaphosa thinks loadshedding can be prevented by the quick deployment of new fossil fuels smuggled onto the grid under the cover of a state of disaster, they will quickly find the future energy funding they have already lined up going elsewhere.

That didn’t stop the NEC. As far as they’re concerned, plans by the national energy crisis committee (perhaps to become a subcommittee of the electricity crisis disaster command council?) must be accelerated “such that there is no load-shedding by the end of the year”.

What a sorry sight. The more deeply the ANC gets involved in trying to solve the crisis it alone created in the first place, the greater the chances of it not being solved at all. Let alone by the end of the year.

I read someone arguing the other day that 80% of the loadshedding since 2008 has taken place on De Ruyter’s watch. Duh. So what? The way countries go bankrupt? Slowly and then quickly. The Titanic sank a lot more quickly at the end than it did when it first hit the iceberg.

The big question is whether Eskom, in its current form, is salvageable at all. We need a deep and sober study. It is an enterprise broken from the paper clip cupboard to unexpectedly heavy and damp ash at Kusile. And if it can’t be fixed, what’s the plan?

Why can the ANC not face reality square in the face? It did during apartheid. Where did it lose its nerve?

THE MORE DEEPLY THE ANC GETS INVOLVED IN TRYING TO SOLVE THE CRISIS ... THE GREATER THE CHANCES OF IT NOT BEING SOLVED AT ALL

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2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

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