Keeping the lights on, even if they are traffic lights, is a welcome initiative to help pull ourselves out of the energy crisis.
On Monday TimesLIVE Premium reported about a creative partnership solution aimed at addressing one of the consequences of load-shedding and crime — the headache of nightmarish intersections when robots are switched off, which causes mayhem and accidents on the roads and stunts business growth.
Last month the Kruger Lowveld Chamber of Business and Tourism (KLCBT) in Mbombela launched an initiative to power 26 traffic lights there and three in White River to alleviate congestion during load-shedding.
Then last week the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) announced it had signed a service-level agreement with a corporate to power traffic lights at an intersection in the city and had identified sites where companies offered to connect city robots to their backup power.
And it seems Cape Town and Durban are headed in this direction — bar a few glitches to foil backup battery rogues.
As one mall owner explained, the solution has the potential to save lives and people will be able to do business as usual.
That’s because the knock-on effect is already bleeding the economy — if business is unable to get traffic to their doors, they will close them. And in doing so, the city and ultimately the provincial fiscus is impacted.
So the helping hand is much needed as local government, at the mercy of Eskom, is unable to dig into much-depleted coffers — threadbare because of corruption, looting, Covid-19, floods and so on — to provide alternative energy sources.
But important distinction needs to be made between being part of a solution and giving government a pass where they should be acting.
Last week Business Times reported the CEOs of two major banks and the largest retailer in the country added their voices to the thundering chorus of dismay, highlighting business’s frustration with intense load-shedding, crumbling infrastructure, corruption and crime.
Cas Coovadia, CEO of Business Unity SA, said President Cyril Ramaphosa was running out of goodwill with business leaders after he asked them at last month’s mining indaba to “get out of their armchairs and work with the government” — because business had been doing that for years.
Business leaders took umbrage with the president’s subtext that business have been resting on their laurels, while government was floundering in the face of the energy crisis.
Their narrative speaks of sounding alarm bells, calling for meetings with government leaders and stepping in with their own solutions — reinvesting in technology and infrastructure to keep their businesses afloat. This while government recedes deeper and deeper into a quagmire of incompetence and inaction.
The blame game is easy to play, but the ultimate loser is the consumer.
Zinhle Tyikwe, CEO of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, which represents the biggest food retailers in the country, said council members had traditionally “adapted and adjusted to meet every challenge resulting from government failures” and tried to roll with the punches.
But enough is enough, and the current conditions are making it near impossible to continue with business as usual.
The traffic light partnership gives credence to the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention, but it is not sustainable for businesses to constantly step up to a government function.
In the face of grey-listing and the downgrading of our credit rating, while we need to continue with partnerships to help tread to safety, it is up to government to lead, stand up and deliver us from the economic evil that threatens to overpower us.
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