André de Ruyter, CEO of Eskom since January 2020, is being unjustly blamed and wrongly praised.
It is quite absurd to blame him for the increased blackouts (oops! I mean ‘load-shedding’) that have occurred since his appointment and quite unfair to ask for his dismissal now. He is probably doing as well as anybody could to fix Eskom now. But his plans for the future are totally wrong. His main fault is not his incompetence but his naiveté.
Three things menace our electricity supply, and therefore our chances of ever having a prosperous industrialised economy. One is in the past, one is in the present and one is in the future.
The first was our failure to build power stations in the 1990s when it was obvious we needed them. This caused us to run out of electricity in 2007, causing irreparable damage to the economy. The fault lay not with ANC ideology but with confused and wishful thinking by both the government and Eskom, especially by Eskom’s senior white managers at the time, who didn’t want the trouble of building new stations and hoped the problem of under-capacity would magically disappear.
The 1998 government policy was half-baked and hesitant, as if its drafters somehow expected the private sector to build the new stations, which was quite impossible since it could never compete against Eskom’s then low prices.
The second thing was the corruption, incompetence and racial ideology of the ANC, which has ruined Eskom. It has brought its coal stations (providing about 90% of our electricity) into disrepair, and plunged it into massive debt, which it cannot repay. Most of this is deliberate ANC policy.
Sole purpose
Until 1994, the sole purpose of Eskom was to provide sufficient electricity and to cover its costs. It did both successfully. After 1994, providing electricity became of secondary importance. The ANC decided the main purpose of Eskom was to advance the ANC’s racial nationalism and to enrich a vast army of relatives, chums, comrades and cadres. White engineers, technicians and managers were kicked out under ‘transformation’ (sometimes called ‘space creation’).
While Eskom was failing, its senior managers were receiving huge bonuses for reaching their equity targets. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) meant that Eskom was required to pay far more for far worse services and equipment from BEE suppliers (politically connected black people). Previously Eskom had cheap, reliable coal supplied by the big mining majors by conveyor belt. BEE replaced this by expensive, unreliable coal supplied by small BEE miners by truck. This resulted in rising debt for Eskom, environmental devastation and the calamity of January 2008 when so many of our coal stations failed that all our gold mines had to shut down. The building of the two new coal stations, Medupi and Kusile, saw a crescendo of corruption and BEE.
In a recent briefing, De Ruyter complained sorrowfully about bad procurement and contracting for Eskom. This was code for BEE procurement and contracting, which he could not say out loud.
If De Ruyter had said before his appointment that he was determined to have procurement and contracting strictly on merit, strictly according to which company could give Eskom the best services at the lowest price, regardless of race or political connections, he would never have been appointed. Perhaps, in his naiveté, he thought that once appointed he could persuade the ANC that transformation and BEE were wrecking Eskom, and should be ended. If so, he did not understand the soul of the ANC.
Green danger
The third thing poses an even greater threat to our future electricity. This is the green danger, the ruinous belief that solar and wind can in some miraculous way provide us with affordable, reliable and clean grid electricity. They can do nothing of the kind, as has been shown in every single country in the world that has used them on the grid.
All around the world, solar and wind have sent electricity prices soaring and electricity reliability plunging. Our own renewable energy program, REIPPPP, now running for eight years, has proved a spectacular failure, with the highest prices and worst electricity in South African history. Much of the motive for the ‘just energy transition’ is to counter the non-existent climate threat by reducing CO2. Actually, the climate is perfectly healthy, and rising CO2 is having no effect on it; it is just having a wonderful effect on plants. On top of this, solar and wind do not reduce CO2, as Germany clearly demonstrates (only nuclear and hydro do).
In short, the ‘just energy transition’ and the urge to build tens of thousands of gigantic wind and solar machines is ruinous folly, which will destroy our electricity supply and damage our environment.
Yet De Ruyter solemnly repeats this nonsense – and is praised by the usual ignorant, sanctimonious crowd for doing so. He wants Eskom to repeat the green madness that has brought grief to Europe, the US and Australia. This is worse than naiveté; this is wilful stupidity.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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