Editorial
Johannesburg - Load shedding is getting worse. There can be no debate about this. But there is no plan to really resolve this crisis except one – the introduction of Turkish power ships off our coast. The government has been resolute about this, despite our courts forbidding their deployment because of environmental concerns.
There are other concerns too, such as the exorbitant cost and length of the contract for no long-term gain. But given what we have experienced this week, it seems to be a straw many of us will want to clutch to in the absence of any other plan.
The greatest problem we have is not the lack of power – that is only a symptom of the increasingly criminal mismanagement of this country by the ruling party – but the lack of any will to resolve it. There is prima facie proof of industrial-scale corruption at Eskom and the tenderpreneur mafia exerting a stranglehold over its supply chain and maintenance contracts, but nothing has been done about it.
It is becoming increasingly impossible to live and work in this country. It’s difficult to run households. It’s difficult for children to go to school. It’s difficult to get to work on time if you have a job. It’s well-nigh impossible to get a job if you don’t have one. Most of all, life is incredibly expensive because of the power cuts.
This is the reality of life in South Africa in 2023. We don’t need surveys telling us how bad it is. We don’t need another commission of inquiry headed by another retired judge to find out in a year’s time that the root cause of the crisis is a lack of leadership.
And that is precisely why the Karpowerships are the worst of bad ideas – even though we are desperate for a solution.