Randolph Power cuts enrage South Africans
Jan 16 2008 09:18 PM
Johannesburg – Power cuts are endangering motorists at traffic intersections, inflicting heavy losses on businesses and infuriating South Africans already disillusioned by leaders embroiled in corruption cases.
State-owned utility Eskom is planning to spend R300bn to boost power capacity in the continent’s biggest economy over the next five years but South Africans plagued by rolling blackouts are losing patience.
The country’s electricity reserves have been eroded by several years of strong economic growth, a doubling of users and delayed construction of power plants. Power cuts rippled across South Africa a year ago, blacking out parts of major cities.
South Africa’s power woes have raised political temperatures in the past, with critics accusing the government of failing to address the energy crunch plaguing Africa’s biggest economy as it gears up to host the soccer World Cup in 2010.
Economist Mike Schussler says South Africa has paid a heavy price because of the outages. “We already think it’s in the hundreds of millions of rand,” he said.
Eskom has now imposed new cuts, which have also affected the crucial mining industry.
Eskom’s spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. But the outages were a hot topic on a radio talk show which asked callers if South Africa had become a banana republic.
Bianca Uys, 33, is troubled in many ways. The manager of a pizza restaurant has watched profits drop by about 50%. Driving home alone at night can be dangerous for women during the best of times – South Africa suffers from one of the world’s worst rates of violent crime, including rape.
Traffic intersections, known as robots, are pitch dark at night, with no signals to guide helpless motorists. “It’s not safe for a woman. I get stuck at the robot,” she said.
Frustrations were already widespread before the lights went off.
‘Cocktail of coverups’
South Africans have just learned that prosecutors will charge their national police chief, Jackie Selebi, with corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering. Selebi has been given an extended leave of absence.
Jacob Zuma, newly elected leader of the ruling African National Congress, will go on trial in August on charges of corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering.
“The general feeling is very negative. It’s a cocktail of coverups among leaders,” Zaid Surtee, who owns an ice cream shop at the posh Sandton City mall, told Reuters.
Every time his staff opens up the glass case covering fancy flavours on offer, the ice cream goes soft and there is no chance of recovery because of the cuts. “This is ridiculous. Nobody has any idea if Eskom is doing anything about this.”
Markets have factored in the allegations hovering around Zuma and Selebi, as well as the power problems, said Esther Law, emerging market strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland in London. “They are adding to negative sentiment,” she told Reuters.
The world’s biggest miner BHP Billiton – South Africa’s single largest power consumer – said the cuts have hit its three massive aluminium smelters.
“It does affect our production, but we normally don’t disclose the impact,” BHP spokesperson Bronwyn Wilkinson said.
“All three of our smelters have been affected this week on a daily basis, and they have been affected frequently since load shedding began late last year.”
Jewellry store owner Mohammed Ravat was more forthcoming about his losses as his employees strained to work through receipts under poor lighting.
“We can’t go on like this. You need to look into the diamond clearly, to show the customers,” he said.
This is the most interesting part, though. A comment posted at the end of the article (unverified) says the following. If it is indeed true, we have a major problem on our hands. I have not edited the comment at all.
Billiton and other large users are already on what are called “interruptable” contracts, so what it means is they get kicked off the grid first, then voluntary interruptable contract holders (large users who in addition elect to get kicked off for better tariffs) gets kicked off, THEN they start other shedding. So the situation is so dire that when they start kiking off munics, the large users (60%+ of RSA’s electricity consumption)have mostly ALREADY been kicked off. Nice, eh? Viva banana republic!