PHILISIWE MPONDO
Load shedding has become the most common concern of South Africans across class, racial, and geographical lines.
The question is how is this related to efforts to transform the energy sector where the role and position of Eskom is somewhat contested between those for privatisation of Eskom and those for strengthening it? Does load shedding strengthen any of the two positions?
Load shedding means the reduction of electricity supply to prevent the power grid from collapsing as a result of excessively higher demand than supply. South Africa has resorted to load shedding as a way to save the grid and keep an even supply of electricity.
This has led to a lot of businesses and operations struggling and collapsing due to the interruption of energy supply. Households have also suffered losses as a result of this tragedy of power outs.
Load shedding is now linked also to high crime rates, xenophobic attacks, corruption, water shedding and political fights to name a few contributing factors.
Eskom says in its mission statements that it wants to be the centre of excellence in power supply. It aspires to be an excellent, and innovative state company supplying South Africa and a few countries in Southern Africa with electricity. These countries include Eswatini, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
With load shedding since 2007, Eskom’s ideals are failing. The economy teeters on the brink of a recession every year. Foreign and domestic investors are kept away by poor security of energy supply. The cost of doing business in South Africa has rocketed, and so have the costs of living with interest rates and inflation rise causing the hiking of food prices by a lot. The cost of producing the goods that keep the economy afloat has risen.
With these crises, the credibility of Eskom is diminishing. It has had changes of boards and executives without positive change. The name Eskom is now associated with the negative and its reputation is in decline as a result.
This is not Eskom’s problem alone. The government has failed to match up with its aims. This turn of events confirms the view that the state has shown incompetence in the management of Eskom as its shareholder.
Load shedding is evidence of incompetence on the part of Eskom and the government since the problems leading to this current electricity crisis were known more than two decades ago.
But it increasingly looks like the load shedding crisis is not just man-made out of ignorance but it is also deliberately engineered and promoted for political and economic motives. It seems there is an agenda to diminish Eskom and weaken it as a dominant energy company. With this crisis, the state is bound to appeal to private companies for help in order to keep the lights on in the country.
Privatisation of Eskom is increasingly promoted as a solution to the energy crisis that South Africa is facing. The privatisation of Eskom will end its monopoly, but also its commitment to the country’s vast access to energy.
South Africa has a very high electrification rate. Eskom is riddled with corruption and incompetence. Yet the strategy is to use the crisis to wedge a space for private power producers. It is so that private companies may take the opportunity to own it.
Although load-shedding has exposed the government’s negligence of state resources and poor service delivery, it is also used as a motive to break the state-owned utility into bits and privatise it.
At the rate of load shedding and public anger that comes from it, many who would have opposed the privatisation of Eskom will end up supporting it in the hope that it is a panacea to all our energy problems. Privatisation seems very imminent. But that could hurt more in society.
Philisiwe Mpondo is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Johannesburg.
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