Hendrik van der Bijl understood what is now shy of a century old. Smuts never interfered and this made Eskom live and survive for years. Then came those who did not understand a complex engineering economic behemoth. By that act the blind led us into their world.
In his book titled Leadership on the Line, Marty Linsky picks on Miles Mahoney, a trusted technocrat in the governor’s office. He was considering a project proposal some powerful people put on the agenda. But on firm grounds Mahoney presented a compelling case to the key advisers of the governor, who agreed with his logic that he should not approve the project. The advisers, however, said to Mahoney: “Go ahead and kill it, Miles. But kill it quickly. You have no idea how heavy those people are who are going to jump on you.” Mahoney went ahead and rejected the project but did not kill it quickly. Alas Mahoney would last only six more months in his position before he was shown the door. The project was approved by his successor. The governor survived and was happy.
What Mahoney failed to hear was the critical temporal dimension of the decision. It had to be done and quickly In short, the ends must justify the means. But if the means linger and fail to deliver there is greater risk of serious entanglement, a risk to which the governor was not prepared to be collateral. This Mahoney did not hear. He only heard “kill it” and failed to hear “quickly”.
Now we are back to a solution we have always known makes sense at least to ensure energy for the next three years.
Milton Friedman, the economics Nobel Laureate,whose ideas created Reaganomics and Thatcherism, had an underlying philosophy similar to the governor’s – shock therapy, or kill it and quick. So successful was the therapy in the collapse of the Soviet Union that the symbolic crumble of the Berlin Wall captured the “kill it quick” mantra. There was no prospect of Sovietology returning to Eastern Europe. Isabella Webber’s book of How China Escaped Shock Therapy is instructive. Friedman thought he would deliver a similar prescription to China. At the time China was angry at its debilitating backwardness. Deng Xiaoping was seeking a cat and he would be colourblind to it as long as it caught mice. So Xiaoping was very vulnerable and had swallowed the bait from Friedman already. Fortunately neither hook nor sinker, the most deadly elements in this shock therapy, had entered his gullet. These were still dancing on the palate as Xiaoping weighed them for taste. He saw what happened in Russia in terms of inflation, unemployment and the dramatic reversals on the socialist gains in terms of life expectancy, education and living conditions. Xiaoping spat the bait out. He saved China from Friedman’s unfettered Reaganomics-cum-Thatcherism market fundamentalism. Instead, Xiaoping proceeded with the Xing dynasty’s market that was informed by an ever-normal granary.
What then of Eskom and the recently announced plans to load-shedding? Since the announcement, blackouts have subsided. So there seems to be an abracadabra that immediately calms this monster. The announced measures are very important in respect of discussing the existing Eskom fleet. Matshela Koko, the former Eskom interim CEO who was fired from the entity, and his other engineer counterparts harped on about how bringing the Eskom fleet back to production in its entirety was the most important task of the state.
So, four years later their advice, offered free and without committee, leaves us no wiser. But four years of delays account for livelihoods and lives diminished and lost. This attention on the fleet comes after the noise of excuses bellowing from those in charge of Eskom: oh the fleet is old; oh the fleet was over-used; oh the fleet is too expensive to maintain; oh there is sabotage; oh we should run as quickly as possible away from coal and all manner of excuses one can find in the comical Ali’s cookbook. As far as planned maintenance goes, there is ample time series data in StatsSA publications proving the Eskom fleet had rhythmic maintenance.
Now we are back to a solution we have always known makes sense, at least to ensure energy for the next three years. The truth is we have always known coal is for now a true solution as we dream greens. Yet to save face we have greens in the pot fully knowing the 6000MW we already have of these has performed far below par.
Clean energy and renewables have always made sense to the millions of people in SA townships and coal-mining communities of Witbank, Soweto and Vanderbijlpark, who were subjected to pulmonary diseases long before those who love the planet emerged.
Suppose the Eskom fleet comes back as it did during Molefe-Koko era. We would be exposed to more energy than our economy actually demands for at least the next 36 months. This begs the question: why is there a litany of items that are not revelant to resolving the immediate energy crisis? These are at best a distraction or a rent seeker who will only fleece Eskom of needed attention, cash and resolve to maintain the fleet.
I am not against clean energy and renewables. They all make sense. They always made sense to the millions of people in SA townships and coal mining communities of Witbank, Soweto and Vanderbijlpark, who were subjected to pulmonary diseases long before those who love the planet emerged. But to insist on executing their science with their proven minimal impact from the 6000MW experimentation in the middle of an existential crisis is bad strategy. It is a bad and foolhardy plan. Facts are not always reasonable, even though they show how the coal-fired fleet of Eskom, including the nuclear one, is more than adequate to resolve the energy crisis and has always been. What is needed is to deploy a leadership and managerially savvy team to lead this obvious solution. Any strategy on renewable energy and independent power producers should be funded generously in the research space, where the experts can undertake science in respect of this forward-looking work, which should include capturing of coal fumes. We should not forget these fumes for years have caused untold pulmonary diseases for communities without a squeak from our environmental militants. For these communities, the planet had long collapsed as they went about their chores as living ghosts.
So what is the puzzle in this room of people and planet? What does it have to do with people or planet? To understand this jigsaw puzzle, you need to apply Miles Mahoney and Milton Friedman’s metaphor. In both instances, it is about shock therapy without a chance for reversion to a previous state of affairs.
Andre de Ruyter failed to hear the latter word in “kill it, but kill it quick” to give way to renewables. Eskom had to be destroyed, coal condemned and ditched as quickly as possible. But as fate will have it the Soviet collapse and the misery that followed is to Xiaoping what the Russia-Ukraine war has been to coal in SA.
Xiaoping, confronted by the tormenting evidence from Russia, sent Milton Friedman packing from China and applied Xing’s philosophy of markets and transformed China into the giant it is today. The Russia-Ukraine war has exposed the international hypocrisy in relations to people and planet. Faced with a choice between people and planet, the West chose their people and left the planet to its own devices. This has placed SA in a corner, one where, by attending rigorously to the coal fleet, SA will have enough energy for at least the next 36 months. The problem is once that happens, banks are unlikely to have an appetite for lending for renewables, neither will the government be ready to finance those.
An economic hiatus is in the making, rendering the rest of the announcements that covered renewables potentially sterile. Miles Mahoney in six months had lost his job and the project was approved with a new man at the helm. With coal winning the day. The chips are now down, the mantra of the “fleet is old and unusable” has run its course. Coal is back, and this mandate is not one that can be led by De Ruyter. He is spent. Like Miles Mahoney, he failed to “kill it quickly”. A new dawn is upon us, but the emperor has no clothes. For engineers and economists in the country, never allow statisticians, accountants and politicians to lead an expert electricity entity where economics and engineering are the key resources required. Move speedily to lead the research on renewables, for there is a future in these too. But for now, the real priority is tofix the fleet of Eskom so that SA can live one more day.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of Economic Modelling Academy (EMA), a professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University and a former statistician-general of SA.
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