AFP So much for power to the people

At The big Sandton mall in northern Johannesburg, idle shoppers stroll in darkness. They have been caught in one of the many blackouts that have plagued South Africa for three weeks. Shops are closed, unable to open their tills or process credit cards. Ice-cream shops watch their merchandise dissolve; food stalls are unable to offer coffee or anything hot to eat. In Cape Town a power cut trapped tourists in the cable car that goes up Table Mountain, and in Pretoria angry commuters whose trains stopped running set them on fire. In Johannesburg, which is congested at the best of times, the roads become gridlocked when the traffic lights go out.

Most shocking of all, the country's largest gold, platinum, coal and diamond producers shut down their underground mines on January 25th, after being told that their electricity supply could not be guaranteed. Five days later, having been promised a stable supply, they resumed production. But they will have to limit their power consumption to 90% of the usual level. On January 29th the authorities said power cuts and rationing would continue until July.

The strange thing is that, until a few years ago, South Africa was producing more electricity than it needed. The apartheid regime, obsessed with self-sufficiency, went on a power-station building binge in the 1970s and 1980s. A few unneeded power stations were even mothballed. South Africa has long taken abundant, low-cost electricity—some of the cheapest in the world, thanks to the country's huge coal reserves—for granted. This makes the current mess particularly galling—and all the more so because it could easily have been avoided.

The government knew a decade ago that supply would run short in around 2007. Because of a successful electrification programme and healthy economic growth, power demand was catching up fast with a capacity that had not increased much since the 1980s. But the government got caught up in a policy debate about the appropriate role for the private sector in electricity generation, so it was only in 2004 that Eskom, the state-owned utility that generates 95% of the country's electricity, got permission to start building again. It is now busy constructing new stations and dusting off those that were mothballed, which should add another 17,000 megawatts by 2014. But frustrated South Africans have been warned that periods of occasional blackouts, euphemistically known as “load shedding”, will be a fact of life for at least another five years.

Thanks to growing demand and rising equipment prices, Eskom's projected investment over the next five years has ballooned to about 300 billion rand ($41 billion). To foot the bill, it plans to borrow and to slap double-digit price increases on consumers. But credit-rating agencies are talking about downgrading the company, which would make borrowing more expensive. So Eskom has asked the government to help by providing fresh capital or credit guarantees. The government, for its part, wants private firms to provide 30% of South Africa's new electricity capacity. But only one private project is under way so far. After much delay a consortium led by AES, an American energy company, won a tender to build two plants that will supply about 1,000 megawatts. If all goes well they should be running late next year.

In the meantime, the reserve margin—the excess of generation capacity over peak demand—has shrunk to about 8%, compared with the international standard of at least 15%. This is too little to cope with maintenance or breakdowns, which are on the rise since the power plants are being run too hard. Questions are being asked about Eskom's ability to maintain its power plants properly and repair them quickly. At the moment 20% of its generation capacity is unavailable because of maintenance or repair work, which is why Eskom has had to start rationing power. Until new power plants become available, South Africans will have to cut back their electricity consumption. The newspapers are full of power-saving tips.

The government says with a straight face that the economy, which grew by 5% last year, will not be affected. But that is hard to believe. Mike Schussler of T-Sec, a stockbroker, reckons that about 600m rand a day of export revenues were lost when the mines stopped work. Large, power-hungry industrial projects, such as the expansion and construction of aluminium smelters by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, need guaranteed electricity supplies in order to go ahead. Small businesses, already hit by rising interest rates, cannot afford generators and are struggling to cope with power cuts. Farmers are losing perishable products when their fridges stop working. According to Azar Jammine of Econometrix, a consultancy, the economy is unlikely to grow by any more than 3% this year, a far cry from the 6% the government says is needed to halve unemployment by 2014.

The impact is also felt beyond South Africa's borders. Eskom is rationing the electricity it exports to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Swaziland. The interruption of mining has pushed up the prices of gold and platinum. The crisis is likely to affect global platinum markets, where supply has been tight for a few years, particularly: South Africa produces over 75% of the world's supply. Carmakers, which buy over half of global platinum production for use in catalytic converters, must be praying South Africa will soon emerge from the darkness.

During his various electoral campaigns, Obama travelled around a fair bit and spoke to his constituents. He compiled a shortlist of what most people of any race, region, religion and class were looking for in their lives. When one reads this list of hopes and wants that he has compiled in this, his second book already, it seems the American people want the same as everybody the world over.

Among this list of very humble wishes are such basics as that those who are willing to work should be able to find a job that pays a living wage. The people he spoke to felt that if they were ill, they shouldn’t have to file for bankruptcy. Children should be able to go to good schools and attend college without the parents having to go into huge debt.

The people also felt that they would like to be safe from crime and protected against terrorists. They wanted clean air and clean water and, when older, they spoke about retiring with dignity and respect.

This list of very humble wishes made me contemplate anew the debate that is raging in South Africa at the moment. This is not a new debate. It seems that every decade or so, a new bunch of South African citizens decide that their home country is no longer a safe place for them and they pack their bags and leave. I have lived through several waves of this with many friends, some of them now happily living all over the world.

Current turmoil is again encouraging those who can to look for greener pastures. As has been the case in the past, the people prepared to stay heap all sorts of abuse on those leaving, and vice versa.

However, looking at the list of wishes that average Americans have, which they believe will enable them to live a contented life, I find that most of these are not attainable if one lives in South Africa.

There are no living wages to be had for the average South African. If one is ill, there are certainly no state benefits one can claim to help out when earnings dwindle. Children in general do not have access to good schools, and college is beyond the means of the average South African citizen and definitely not free.

And as for crime! My UK buddies couldn’t believe that my daughter, who survives life in Pretoria, has had her car windows armour-plated. She and her husband do not stop at traffic lights at night for fear of being attacked. They live in a security complex with electric fencing and security guards and their next-door neighbour in the complex was a victim of an armed robbery a month ago.

So far, she has been held up in an armed robbery that was interrupted by a friend with a gun, otherwise she might not be alive today. One of her husband’s uncles was murdered in an armed robbery and her brother-in-law hijacked and shot in his face. He is lucky to be alive. I pray for their lives every day.

Every person we know in South Africa has either been attacked or has a family member or friend who has been murdered or “only” attacked. My daughter and her husband hope to leave by the end of the year. They both have businesses in South Africa that are doing well and which will need to be left behind.

What is the pact that a government has with its citizens? The citizens work hard, pay taxes, have children whom they educate and prepare for adulthood, and then they retire. For this the government, paid by said taxes, has certain obligations towards its citizens.

When the government cannot deliver on those obligations — basic services such as clean air and water, electricity, schooling and good hospitals, or a safe environment — surely the citizens are entitled to decide to leave? It’s like saying that you should stay in a job even though the company you work for is mistreating you. Nobody in their right mind would put up with that, if they had a chance to change the situation.

Those South Africans who actually maintain that life is no better in other countries are delusional. They are so used to the crime that they don’t notice it any more. They think it’s just a matter of time before everything will be fine. The loudest people who maintain that South Africa is OK are the ones who have the money to live in fortresses, send their children to private schools and have no idea how the rest of the population lives. If one can call it living.

But it’s not even the problems of crime and violence or power failures in South Africa that are persuading its citizens to leave. It is the idea of a Jacob Zuma presidency that is the final straw. Zuma, with his “honest sidekicks” such as Tony Yengeni — who is probably destined for high office; maybe even the new minister of finance because he knows about money — will finish it off.

It’s not easier for people to leave. It’s the hard option. My own family emigrated to South Africa from a post-war Germany. My father just couldn’t find a job in textiles and the Frame Group signed up skilled people from all over Europe to manage its then growing empire of factories. Well, do I remember that first day in school when I did not understand one word of English and I watched my mother trying to shop for groceries using sign language …

It’s tough leaving one’s homeland and getting used to how things are done in another country, never mind establishing one’s basic personal infrastructure such as doctors, dentists or psychiatrists. There is also the task of finding and making new friends, establishing businesses and finding jobs. It’s almost a more difficult option than staying behind and living with the turmoil.

But when I tell people in the UK how I used to live, they look at me as if I am from another planet. I lived in Cape Town, obligatory barbed wire around my property, and we had power cuts before the rest of South Africa. I know about sitting in traffic because the traffic lights are down, or driving from one petrol station to another to find one where the pumps work. Or about the money our businesses lost because the office and workshop closed down without power.

Not only South Africans know that even more troubled times are ahead. The BBC showed a documentary this month called No More Mandelas, which was also picked up and shown by an independent broadcaster in South Africa. It became obvious to South Africans that the rest of the world knows it too.

The programme discusses the fact that the leadership has drifted away from what Nelson Mandela promised his country. Regrettably, the first act of Mandela has had no comparative second act in Thabo Mbeki, and the third act under Jacob Zuma promises to be a further slide downhill. Perhaps there are no more Mandelas, but one wonders what the people of the country would do for a Barack Obama? Regrettably Jacob Zuma isn’t one.

IN South Africa: “Spending fever has reached all walks of South African life. Here’s a fellow who lives in a squatter camp beyond Somerset West in Western Cape who now wants a television set – a new one, mind, not that second-hand thing in the pawn-shop window – so he buys one from the High Street furniture retailer.”

But he’s back next day, saying the things keeps switching off just at the crucial moment. The shop checks it out and can find nothing wrong, but soon enough he’s back with the same complaint.

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