The elders have always warned of “the grass that is greener in the far horizon”.
This proverb is even truer when the pun masters of greener transitions, Germany and the UK, have just gone dirty at the slightest pressure of energy poverty in their own countries on the back of self-inflicted effects of their sanctions on Russian gas.
Instead of going on hunger strike for green, they have gone back to eat brown and dirty.
The conduct of Europe is confirmed by Jacob Maroga. The former engineer CEO of Eskom says the green energy is fine but not good enough. And this is affirmed by past engineer CEOs of Eskom, which include Matshela Koko, and nuclear energy experts such Dr Kelvin Kemm.
Those who worked on coal mines, especially coal mines that suffer methane outbreaks, know they should follow the rats. Rats can sense the odourless methane and know which direction to take to run for cover. Outgoing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson may just be such a metaphorical rat
Six weeks ago, the Western Cape government accosted the president to declare the energy crisis as a state of disaster.
In response to this, minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan and Eskom spokesperson Mr Sikonathi Mantshantsha said we were only at stage 2 load-shedding, implying that stage 8 is very far and the state of disaster is thus uncalled for.
I penned an article on the "Comical Ali" metaphor in respect of their response to the call by the Democratic Alliance. Not that I was inspired by the DA's call for this declaration — no, not at all, as it sounded hollow — but rather because given the emptiness of the lot we have, a declaration would be just an exhortation and an unfettered licence for a set of terribly misguided actions.
On Wednesday, as the pressure mounted, when the Comical Ali declarations came to pass and we entered stage 6 and 7 of load-shedding, the exhortations and missteps in the field of war deafened. The busy bodies said now they will send a helicopter all over the world to get the South African engineers back — albeit with a qualification that those who were fingered in Zondo will not be considered.
Gordhan, I must repeat, did what none did by standing up to President Zuma’s capture and in this regard nothing can be taken away from him.
Zondo asks the president a pertinent question of where he was when the country was drained and under attack when he was the second in charge. However, the Comical Ali posture cannot be the price we pay for the gallant stance he took.
The owners of the gift horse have abandoned seeing the horizon as green at the slightest energy inconvenience. They have gone dirty coal, while promising South Africa the green horizon
In addition to the missteps the Zondo commission pointed out about President Ramaphosa, there is now another fatal one: not the Phala Phala show but the signing of the $8.5bn (R144.45bn) loan.
This is not a gift horse — whose dental formation, though, should be checked thoroughly — but it is about knowing that this is a true Trojan Horse.
The owners of the gift horse have abandoned seeing the horizon as green at the slightest energy inconvenience. They have gone dirty coal, while promising South Africa the green horizon. They have decided to globalise their local dilemma and passed this sacrifice to be paid by their poster boy, South Africa, who should show the rest of the former colonised south how to behave, in their classical duty, as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the master.
Germany is importing South African coal to stem their energy needs and pushb ack on the sanctions against Russian gas. Europe faces the emergence of winter and in its face they have thrown out of the window the commitment to just transition. Instead, they want to sell to us the manufactured products of wind and solar through the $8.5bn Trojan Horse that South Africans will have to pay through eternity.
This is a double whammy. We ignore our own coal, which we have in abundance, for production of our own electricity. Instead, our coal is exported to fire coal plants in Germany and the UK, who cannot stand sacrifices for the planet. We then take a loan of $8.5bn to purchase manufactured panels from Germany in order to fire our own industrialisation, when to date we know that wind and solar cannot resolve our industrial needs.
Germany and the UK cannot produce these wind and solar things at the pace that can solve their problems of just being cold in the next winter, let alone pursuing their industrialisation.
We have fallen in an existential trap that we can ramp up our industrialisation on this. This is too comical to stomach — no vision whatsoever on economic policy and only condemnation of generations to come to debt.
Let us step back to the Mont Fleur scenarios and the adoption of GEAR. Faulty as GEAR was, it can now be elevated to superior brilliance. Our leadership cannot analyse nor relate to what continued neoliberalism is really pushing us towards.
This time around, it is clear that even in the presence of the wisdom of Noam Chomsky, who describes the common technique of destroying public good through privatisation as "defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital".
The non-engineer CEO of Eskom is focusing on mothballing coal plants, instead of bringing them online for industry to do what it does best.
This time around, our government wakes up to the fact that it has appointed people who are not engineers to the boards and executive positions of Eskom. But instead of releasing these citizens that cannot perform the job, they have opted to take a loan and selected to send a helicopter around the world with a hailer for South African engineers — to be under the guidance not of the lame but of the blind.
Borrowing at this scale from the IMF and World Bank is what Madiba objected to in exchange to adopting a self-imposed GEAR. This latest in missteps flies in the face of Madiba, who refused to borrow from that lot
No strategic thinker and leader of society conducts public policy so miserably. The problems of Eskom are not today's, they have been there for at least the past 10 years. It behoves visionary leadership and authority to win back the engineering skills that were pillaged and to build new ones. This is no-brainer.
Borrowing at this scale from the IMF and World Bank is what Madiba objected to in exchange to adopting a self-imposed GEAR. This latest in missteps flies in the face of Madiba, who refused to borrow from that lot.
Flawed as GEAR was, now it looks princely through this latter-day political lot, who cannot even look at drawing from our own pension trillions in rand-denominated currency that Madiba had no access to then.
Last week at the G7, the president undertook to take due diligence on what the just transition will entail. The question is, before putting pen to paper, where is the evidence of the due diligence? And what are the means of verification that such due diligence will deliver results?
Again, South Africa is handed down a lemon that we accept.
If we do not want to see Zondo mark 2, parliament and society should demand accountability from this executive and president on this matter. Indeed, the grass always looks greener on far-off mountains — until you reach them.
Should you not believe, ask Boris Johnson, who has just become the former PM.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the Director of Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University and the former Statistician-General.
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