What’s in a name? Umkhanyakude is a settlement in Umhlabuyalingana in KwaZulu-Natal. Umkhanyakude, meaning light seen from afar, could refer to two things. First, that it can be seen from afar due to the light it emits or light seen in the distance and from afar when you are in Umkhanyakude because of darkness. The statement resigns it to darkness and affirms Matthew 26:11, that the poor will always be with you. Similarly, Deuteronomy 15:11 says: “For the poor will never cease to be in the land.”
Madiba, despite living in poverty and prison, threw away the gown of penury by asking the right questions. He represented that light that could be seen from afar as it radiated from deep within him into world affairs. When you enter the UN headquarters on One UN Plaza in New York, you come across a monumental honour to South Africa. Nelson Mandela’s day has been observed by the UN since 2009 and on September 24 2018 another milestone of responsibility was piled on this country when president of the 73rd General Assembly of the UN María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés unveiled a statue of Mandela in the UN precinct.
On this occasion, Garcés said: “This morning, it is an honour and a privilege to be with you for the official unveiling of the statue of Nelson Mandela. I thank President [Cyril] Ramaphosa and the government and people of South Africa for this symbolic honour for a man whose life and sacrifice set an example of honour for the whole world. My friends, few people in the history of our world have left such an incredible mark on humanity. The legacy of Mandela, borne out of the struggle against apartheid, grew to encompass not only the rights of the people of South Africa, but the sheer necessity and universality of human rights for all. His is a legacy of perseverance, of dedication and of unwavering commitment to the dignity of people. The statue that we unveil today is not done in mourning for his passing, as so many monuments are, but is done in celebration and in deep respect and gratitude. This statue will stand as testament to Mandela and, by extension, to the values that he so fiercely defended and fought for: for racial equality, for non-discrimination and for the incredible value and dignity of human life. In his first landmark speech to the United Nations, Nelson Mandela made a statement that remains as relevant today as it did in 1994: ‘The great challenge of our age to the UN Organisation is to answer the question — given the interdependence of the nations of the world — what is it that we can and must do to ensure that democracy, peace and prosperity prevail everywhere?’.”
Over the past week I attended the 54th session of the UN Statistical Commission, the first in-person gathering since March 2020. Being among bean-counter colleagues after the terrifying gap of two years since we last convened came with a level of weightiness and gravity of thought as some of the friends present during the last, 51st session, had succumbed to Covid-19. Added to this is Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has escalated and threatens to mutate into a nuclear arsenal. This is where the question Mandela posed to the UN General Assembly becomes important: “What is it that we can and must do to ensure that democracy, peace and prosperity prevail everywhere?”
As I took a picture standing against the greatness of Madiba, I asked myself what South Africa can and must do to escape the multiple crises to which we have become accustomed. Answers are difficult to come by as lumps develop in your throat when the thought that this greatness was accorded a country now swimming in a pigsty. The wise say never spread jewels in front of a pig as it will swallow them just like any other rock chip. So the important question of prevalence of democracy, peace and prosperity everywhere suddenly rings hollow as darkness descends on South Africa.
South Africa is owed an answer to Nelson Mandela's question.
I paid attention to the recent television interview with Eskom board chair Mpho Makwana in the aftermath of the unceremonious departure of the power utility’s CEO André de Ruyter. The issues he covered were all-important and it is not my intention to regurgitate them here, but rather to deliver a critique as I place Madiba’s pertinent question, rephrased as “What is it that we can and must do to ensure electricity prevails everywhere in South Africa, including in Umkhanyakude?”. As a reminder, except for the paradox or irony of Umkhanyakude’s name, darkness prevails everywhere, in contradistinction to the more than 80% of South African households that achieved access to electricity by 2011. What Makwana's interview reminded me of is that soon darkness will prevail everywhere in a country that once shone when Eskom relentlessly delivered on its mandate. Makwana said those who can afford to should install solar. He advised businesses that road intersections have a geographic relationship with them and they should do the same to run traffic lights to ease flow thereof.
He made a profound point about electricity in the box, a product Eskom manufactures, pointing out that this serves about 50 housing units and is how the poor's access to power might be addressed. Electricity in the box costs R2m for 50 such units. However, it becomes irrelevant in estimates of what can be produced produce — a 100 in a year. So the Eskom chair knows his capacity, but seems not to know demand. South Africa has about 17-million households. Makwana is talking to two-million who can go to the mountain and go solar. That means 15-million households will remain destitute when the power goes down. And at a hundred units of electricity in the box per year, Makwana will be manufacturing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s entrepreneur who used the R350 monthly relief fund to establish an ice cream business. The Eskom chair will electrify only 5,000 food-hungry households. Throwing out numbers without thinking suggests even the entrepreneurial possibilities regarding Ramaphosa’s ice cream man or Makwana’s electricity in the box get lost in the absence of relating arithmetic to possibilities.
For instance, had Ramaphosa interrogated the story of his ice cream entrepreneur he would have established the threshold resources required for R350 to ignite magic. On the basis of that he would be armed to demand his minister of small businesses provide daily support of R350 to the entrepreneur, provided he daily pay back the money to lubricate his sunshine delight. In the case of Makwana, the right question to ask would have been how many households require electricity in the box? Stats SA has the answer — 15 million. Then he could take the issue a step further by asking Eskom what it would require and how long it would take to ramp up production of these units for these households. The back of a cigarette box would show Eskom would have to produce 300,000 units to measure up.
Stats SA has bundles of a hundred households geographically mapped with their socioeconomic status from Limpopo to the Western Cape. Makwana could go further with a cigarette-box calculation and ask if the poor would pay R300 a month for this electricity and how much it would generate for Eskom. It would be R300m a month, thus R3.6bn a year. Then the questions would become more complicated: how many people and with what skills should be employed to ramp up production? What should he do with the R240bn from Treasury given each unit costs R2m and we need 300,000. It would cost R600bn. What is the economic and social cost of no electricity for 15-million households and what will be the employment benefit of producing the electricity-in-the-box units to defray the social and economic costs to these households?
Between the ice cream entrepreneur and the 5,000 electricity-in-the-box information, South Africa has an information processing gap of Mexican Gulf proportions. Yet the jewels that serve as stepping stones are available to start crossing the river. This is the entrepreneurial mindset we require at all levels, especially leadership level. The rephrased Madiba question, “What is it that we can and must do to ensure electricity prevails everywhere in South Africa, including in Umkhanyakude?” requires minds unconstrained by the ability of the rich to run up the hill to safety, but by what it takes for a poor household to cover the last mile and survive another day.
China’s innovation strategy is tested and ground-truthed on the most disadvantaged. The results are always spectacular when the lives of those who need assistance most are changed. It is this that we require in this electricity crisis. How does electricity in the box reach 15-million households within a year? The answer is to catalyse capital and heighten Eskom by contributing significantly to skills development, employment and what Makwana rightly says — the protection of infrastructure in the areas where delivery of electricity in the box has occurred. Focusing on the rich is a sure cyanide that will annihilate Eskom. But focusing on 300,000 bundles of electricity for 15-million poor households will not only deal with the poor’s energy hunger, it will illustrate the value of public-service multiplier effects on employment, a care economy and industrialisation with a conscience. This may just catapult Umkhanyakude to its prophetic name.
Madiba said: “The great challenge of our age to the United Nations organisation is to answer the question — given the interdependence of the nations of the world — what is it that we can and must do to ensure that democracy, peace and prosperity prevail everywhere!” South Africa is owed the answer so Madiba can rest peacefully. It hurt to take a photo with him against the knowledge of darkness spooking South Africa. It pitted him against Eskom.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
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