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=Power for the people must be state's priority=


 * Editorial, Sunday Independent, 20 January 2008**

Rolling blackouts cripple cities. Traffic grinds to a halt as robots go out. Businesses close their doors for the day as yet another rolling power cut leaves them hamstrung.

Economic growth is under threat, and the standing joke among angry and frustrated citizens is: "What did we have before candles? Electricity!''

To blame is the state power supplier which, because of several factors, including a botched reregulation plan, is no longer able to supply sufficient power, even as it raises electricity tariffs.

Ring a bell? Well, this was California in 2000 and 2001, and now South Africa in 2008, and for the foreseeable future.

California, as the Americans would say, caught itself behind the curve and short of power after not building any new power plants in the 1990s. South Africa, some South Africans would say, has found itself in the kak and short of power after not building any new power stations in the 1990s.

So Eskom and the state are not alone in desperately failing their customers and citizenry. But our highlighting that even a leader of the high-tech world such as California was capable of bungling its power supplies serves not to minimise the extent of the power problems in South Africa, or the culpability of a government that was not able to provide one of the nation's most basic requirements. It merely shows that government and parastatal incompetence are not endemic to South Africa alone.

Recalling California's past woes is not to minimise the shame being heaped on Eskom for not ramming its needs through and the anger at the government's inertia, which will sabotage vitally needed economic growth.

If you believe that is overstating the case, then listen to Bongani Nqwababa, Eskom's finance director, who this week told Business Report that South Africa should be closed to big new industrial projects at least until 2013 because there would not be enough power before then. He said the parastatal had advised the government that it was inappropriate to advertise South Africa to foreign investors as a destination with low-cost electricity. "You don't sell what you don't have," he said.

He went on to cast doubt about the availability of power for present projects, including the massive Coega industrial development zone in the Eastern Cape.

So there you have it - never mind the power cuts to your businesses, homes and streets, job-starved South Africa cannot embark on any significant industrial development until more power plants come on stream.

In the short term businesses will step into the void by investing in generators, but it is to the government that we look for leadership and action on the power crisis. Power for the people must top its agenda.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4213759**

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