Unsurpringly, apartheid is to blame

[OubaasDik]

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Apartheid-to-blame-for-blackouts-Zuma-20141212

Not the lack of any new infrastructure, not the cancelling of maintenance over the past four years, apartheid.

I feel for the people left in that dungheap of a country.

Here I set my clock on microwave when I buy it and adjust it every 6 months when we go on or off daylight saving.

[HadEnoughofJuju]

We set the clock on our micro and never adjust it, here in QLD we're special, we don't have daylight savings.

[OubaasDik]

Well, yes, I was in WA, and moved to ACT ....

WA are just as special.

After about two years the microwave clock can get out by nearly 10 mins .....

[zoot]

So now when you find the clock out by 10 mins you must blame it on apartheid.☺

[SurferMan]

Its all a plot by dark 3rd forces. Coloniast, cha charag, imperialist forces. Ask Juju. PMSL

[HansaPlease]

I must admit, at first I snorted, but - if you read what he's saying - it's actually not that preposterous.

He's saying that during apartheid, the infrastructure was only built to supply a certain demographic. Since apartheid, the demand has skyrocketed and although the supply has increased, it has not kept up with the demand. Sure, Eskom and the Government are both to blame for not keeping up with the increase in demand, but there is some truth in what Zoomer says.

(Ducks for cover)

[SurferMan]

Lets all go moer Hansa for giving Zoomer an out. LOL. I must agree, but still, they knew about it almost 20 years ago. But it was more important to score votes than keep the lights on, since the townships steal it anyways. See the connection technology below.

[OubaasDik]

Not really, Hansa - when the chief of Eskom cuts maintenance by 80% for some reason and the shortage is known to be coming, and they did sweet nothing about it, the fault is theirs

Whining about apartheid when you've had 20 years to work on it is ridiculous - they probably spent all the Eskom money on arms deals.

[Craig01]

..... that perfectly running near-new car that you gave me in 1994 ..... you mean I had to have it serviced? ... eisch

or

..... that perfectly running near-new 2 seater sportscar that you gave me in 1994 ..... you mean I should have upgraded it once I found out that my wife was expecting triplets? ... eisch

[SurferMan]

"What do you mean power stations need servicing? Isn't it like my BMW, Muckcedes and Audi, they come with plans built in? Eisch!"

This must be a creation of racist, colonial charag dark forces. There is no word in Pedi for load shedding, so it does not exist! (with credit to JUJU for this)

Africa survived for hundreds of years without power, we don't need it. Africa is going back to its roots.

If I were in charge, there would be mass sacking. But of course its the poor taxpayer that will be ass caned for this. And the next 3 generations will pay for their folly. Poor SA.

[OubaasDik]

"What do you mean power stations need servicing? Isn't it like my BMW, Muckcedes and Audi, they come with plans built in? Eisch!"

This must be a creation of racist, colonial charag dark forces. There is no word in Pedi for load shedding, so it does not exist! (with credit to JUJU for this)

Africa survived for hundreds of years without power, we don't need it. Africa is going back to its roots.

If I were in charge, there would be mass sacking. But of course its the poor taxpayer that will be ass caned for this. And the next 3 generations will pay for their folly. Poor SA.

I would like to point out that there is no word in Pedi for Breitling, Yves St Laurent or Mercedes, and yet Juju had NO problem understanding them .... eisch

[SurferMan]

OBD,

That was brilliant mate. Some more please. What amazes me is where the money keeps coming from to support the militant little twit.

[OubaasDik]

Much as I'd like to take credit, I read it about 5 years ago at the time of the Castor Simenya thing where he was saying there was no word in Pedi for hermaphrodite (or whatever she happens to be), therefore she couldn't be whatever it was, and some newspaper commentator pointed out that in spite of Pedi speakers being unable to expand their vocabulary, he had managed it in a few cases.

[SurferMan]

I wonder what our old frenemy Mr. chzaau would have to say about this. No doubt he would be along the "lines" (excuse the pun) of saying how this showcases African entrepreneurship at its best and "lateral thinking" to problem solving.

Of course when the planes start falling out of the skies due to chronic mismanagement at SAA it will be the evil wit ous fault for not designing maintenance free aircraft. I was just chatting to a mate who contracts to EKSDOM recently, and he reckons that there are SSA agents all over the Megawatt Park building on the lookout for media leaks. He works in the BI space and says there level of cover-up is unbelievable.

He tells me that the situation is actually way more dire than most know, but at the same time the blackouts are deliberate, the same as 2008 to make Medupi and Kusile costs more "palatable". He says they are working flat out to engineer a public campaign to make the nuclear deal look like the only viable option. All starts to make sense now doesn't it....?

[OubaasDik]

Surferman - that's crazy talk - you're implying that they can think ahead ....

Actually, those power stations should have been finished years ago .... no nukes necessary - I'd hate to see what an African country achieves with a Fukushima-scale disaster .....

[SurferMan]

ROFL

True, they will start the power station building but never finish. Finally one when they do, 5 trillion later, it wont be long before something goes boom. hey look, there are always candles and donkeycarts mate! Its actually scary that most of the population has no idea, and those that do have no say. Sad.

[KalahariHarry]

Here's one...

A While back the minister of water affairs was taken on due to dams being at such low levels, and responded with the following:

"It is because of apartheid that the dams of empty because the whites built the dams too big" :-)

Eish, I donno.

[SurferMan]

PMSL. African logic at it's finest. I see they say they need some 750 Billion to fix the water....Wait till the Acid Mine Drainage hits the PWV area after some hard rains. My mate owns properties at the Vaal and Harties, and he says they dont even swim or ski there anymore cos of the pollution. Saw serage floats about all over the place. My uncle is over here visting now and he says in Silverton there sewerage has been running down the street for over a year. My home town of Mtuba has been under administration in 2012 (http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mtubatuba-placed-under-administration-1.1388217#.VJ4Ctf8B_ok) and IS STILL under admin.

WTF? When I lived there stuff worked, albeit slow and typical KZN style, but people clubbed together and fixed things. If I recall correctly some 20% of towns are now under admin. Thats scary.

[Craig01]

...would now be the right time to ask for a headcount of who voted 'Yes' in the 1992 Referendum? hehe

[SurferMan]

Waaahaa, craig01,

i was one of them, and it was also the last time I voted. I refuse to put my pen mark near any pollies.

[blung]

This article was quite sobering \ heartbreaking \ etc etc

http://mg.co.za/article/2015-01-08-21-days-and-eskoms-broke

I particularly enjoyed "The embattled state-owned enterprise is creating diesel-generated power at R3 per kilowatt hour.... It sells electricity at the regulated price of 70 cents per kilowatt hour."

Sustainable??

[SurferMan]

Hi blunt,

Of course its sustainable, NOTT!!! :jester:We have an endless supply of taxpayers who will do our bidding. Government guarantees their continued follies, and then grabs the money from the poor taxpayer. We must all pay out fair share they say. Fair share my ass. There is no chance SAA, Eskom, Randwater, et al can keep going. Its just not possible. SAA has been getting bailouts since that tosser took his millions and ran, forget his name. Transnet gambled those poor pensioners pensions away. Guess what, they lost the court case. Where will Gov get the money to give to Transnet, that's right, the taxpayer.

So in real terms the former generation lost their pension, the new generation gets to pay it, AND theirs. ANYONE see a problem with this picture? Why is nobody in jail for this? This is looting. Oh sorry, RDP, GEAR, NDP, Revolution, ACT, etc et al.

[Dapora2014]

Just to set it straight!!!!!

SOME of Eskom’s former executives have opted to set the record straight after President Jacob Zuma blamed the utility’s woes on apartheid, for the second time in as many months.

"We don’t feel guilty about the energy issue," Zuma reportedly told the ANC faithful during the party’s birthday bash in Cape Town last weekend. "It is not our problem of today, but a historic problem, one of apartheid, that we are resolving.

"After 1994, we had to provide energy to all, because people had the right to energy, and we suddenly realised we didn’t have enough," Zuma said, before talking about the low price of electricity during the apartheid era and how it was always designed to serve a few if not to attract foreign investment. These were arguments he had also used at the end of last year as the Eskom crisis began to deepen.

True to the characteristic secrecy that defines its operations, the parastatal refused to provide the Financial Mail with copies of planning documents from the early 1990s to test Zuma’s assertion. However, a number of the utility’s strategy people from that period have opted to "let the real story be known".

"Crises of the magnitude we are witnessing today are not new," says Jac Messerschmidt, who served on Eskom’s management board for much of his 32-year career before retiring in 1999.

In the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, Eskom (or Escom as it was known until 1987) lowered its prices and demand for electricity shot up as thousands of users — domestic and industrial alike — began to migrate to the cheaper form of energy. This forced a rush to build three power stations — Arnot, Kriel and Matla — which inevitably forced a sharp hike in electricity prices to part-fund the rapid expansion plans.

What Eskom did not quite appreciate, however, was its relatively unskilled workforce for the kind of plants it had brought on stream, some of which were poorly designed. By 1981, the utility was forced to embark on large-scale load-shedding as it tended to its operational disasters, says Messerschmidt.

This forced the strategists back to the drawing board. Eskom went on an enormous spending spree and commissioned five new stations to help meet demand.

But the economic consequences of the international sanctions imposed on the apartheid state became manifest only in the mid-1980s, says Brian Statham, who headed the planning unit before becoming an Eskom general manager prior to his leaving in 2007. This left them with surplus capacity and a new kind of crisis to deal with.

By the end of that decade, five stations had been mothballed (of which two would eventually be decommissioned, the other three coming back on stream in the early 2000s). A privatisation study was also called for by government in the late 1980s, which favoured selling off the utility. However, that plan came to naught due to the changing of the political guard that began with the unbanning of the ANC in 1990.

The trend across the world at that time was towards the liberalisation of energy markets, and though former president Nelson Mandela talked up nationalisation and people power upon his release from prison in 1990, the tune of the ANC began to change as the party’s leaders toured the world, drumming up investment for the new SA.

"Essentially, the ANC government that began in 1994 opted to bring in independent power producers and Eskom was stopped in its tracks from developing further capacity," says Statham.

"But as the ANC government courted, and was courted by, potential foreign investors, at the same time as Eskom continued planning as though it had a monopoly over the country’s power production, there was little happening in terms of new capacity projects being initiated."

The utility was also regarded by the new government as a relic from an era that had run its course. Any suggestions on the management’s part to build more capacity or plan ahead into the 2000s was interpreted as a bid to maintain the status quo, while predictions of a looming energy shortage fell on deaf ears.

"In the late 1990s, Eskom’s plans clearly predicted that we would have a shortage in capacity somewhere between 2006 and 2008 if we didn’t address the issue of capacity then," recalls Statham. (They were not far off: Black Friday hit the mining sector in the third week of January 2008.) However, by 1998 the white paper on energy was in place and it had allocated all future capacity building plans to independent power producers, so Eskom’s hands were tightly tied.

But the expected foreign direct investment to facilitate the liberalisation plans never materialised, at least not in the energy sector. SA was a new democracy without mature energy policies and regulations; there was a lot of uncertainty and people were reluctant to invest.

"The ownership structure of Eskom didn’t help either," says Ian McRae, the CEO from 1985 to 1994, referring to the fact that the utility provided only a percentage of direct supply, with the rest coming from the extensive network of municipalities who buy in bulk from Eskom, which deterred potential independent power producers, in his view.

But the looming energy crisis was not abating. Shortly after he became minister of public enterprises in 2004, Alec Erwin admitted government had "got its timing wrong". He called on Eskom to begin plans for the construction of two new plants, Medupi and Kusile.

Three years later, then president Thabo Mbeki followed suit and said: "When Eskom said to government: ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’ ... we said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong."

But, says Statham, by then a lot of the experienced Eskom hands had been retrenched. "And it was also a sellers’ market at that time and with Eskom negotiating these two big projects in a crisis, my sense is they negotiated difficult deals," the fall-out from which we are living with today.